Cave Noire is a roguelike game. The game's story revolves around four quests: killing monsters, freeing fairies, or collecting gold/orbs. Each quest has ten difficulties, with the difficulty level determining the target number, starting stats, and encountered monsters. Starting a quest generates a randomly created dungeon, where the player has only one chance to reach the goal - failure means a new dungeon is created.
The gameplay involves exploring dungeons from a top-down perspective, with features such as the hero, walls, floor tiles, monsters, and items to collect. Movement is turn-based, divided into four phases: player movement, player attack, monster attack, and finally monster movement. Attacks are calculated based on statistics like attack, defense, luck, and random elements, affecting health points.
The environment plays a crucial role in the game. Special effects are triggered by touching walls or tiles, such as pits, breakable walls, lava, or teleporters. Some rooms are covered in fog, obscuring floor tiles until the hero touches them. Certain monsters have opposing effects when killed.