The game is a platform adventure where Dizzy must search the fairy tale land of Katmandu for a Leprechaun's Wig, a Cloud's Silver Lining, a Vampire Dux Feather, and a Troll Brew and deposit them in a cauldron to make a potion to defeat the evil wizard Zaks.

The game includes several lines from J. Milton Hayes' poem The Green Eye of the Yellow God on banners in certain screens, where they serve as clues on how to solve some puzzles.

The Oliver Twins said in an interview, on the British television show When Games Attack, that the character Dizzy was originally not supposed to be an egg at all but just a face with hands and feet.

Dizzy gets his name from the character's tumbles and somersaults while jumping, a feature inspired by the Oliver Twins' graphics software Panda Sprites which enabled them to rotate an image easily so each frame did not have to be manually drawn.

The software distorted complex sprites so the character was required to be simple, hence the choice of an egg.