The player assumes control of Mario with the objective of collecting Cat Shines by completing platforming challenges while traversing across the island areas.

The game received positive reviews, with many critics highlighting its open world, numerous deviations from both 3D World and prior 3D Mario games, and approach to nonlinear design; criticism was directed towards its lack of technical polish, repetitive challenges, and the intrusiveness of the Fury Bowser events.

As of March 2024, Bowser's Fury has sold 13.47 million units worldwide in association with the Switch version of 3D World, making it one of the best-selling games on the console.

The Godzilla-esque fury event can interrupt the player's activity every few minutes, but also gives new gameplay opportunities, such as generating new platforms in the sky and using the ability to bait Bowser's fiery breath to destroy otherwise indestructible obstacles.

[4] Alternatively, the player can wait out the event or, with enough Cat Shines, choose to directly confront Bowser in a kaiju-esque battle set in a reduced scale version of Lake Lapcat.

[6] Visually, the game displays at a reduced framerate when played in handheld mode, with drops in frame rate during chaotic on-screen action.

After being absorbed by it, Mario finds himself in an archipelago of cat-themed islands called Lake Lapcat that have become overrun with black sludge.

[28][29] Reviewers noted the game's "experimental" nature, both in its inventive approach to the series' first fully open world,[2][8] foretelling future Mario games,[7] and its lack of technical polish relative to the series' standards,[2][3] exemplified by its noticeable drops in framerate[2][7] and unperfected ideas.

[3] The game's foray into a fully open world challenged the Mario tradition of leisurely, "meticulously designed obstacle courses", wrote Polygon, and instead presented as an improvisational rumpus room filled with colorful distractions, messy and warm.

[8] On the technical end, the game's framerate drops made Kotaku's reviewer desire for more powerful hardware.

[7] Some reviewers were frustrated with the frequent interruptions caused by the Fury Bowser event,[4] especially towards the end of the game,[3] but others praised it as an adrenaline rush due to the added challenge and unpredictability.

[5][8] After a few hours, Ars Technica found the game repetitive and sparse, returning to the same areas for some challenges with only minor novelty.

[6] GameSpot too acknowledged a number of uninspired repeat challenges, exacerbated by the fury event's intrusion while pursuing some of the harder Shine tokens.