[1] It is often cited as one of the earliest examples of a Metroidvania game[2] and featured "realistic gravity, inertia and object mass years before players understood the concept of a physics engine... an astounding level of AI, stealth-based gameplay, a logical ecosystem governing the world's creatures and a teleportation mechanic that feels startlingly like a predecessor to Portal".

[3] The player takes the role of Mike Finn, a leading member of a space-exploration organisation called Columbus Force, who have been ordered to the planet Phoebus as part of a rescue mission.

As with Elite, a novella (written by Mark Cullen, with input from the game's authors) was included to set up the story, and to provide some clues as to the nature of the planet Phoebus' environment.

[4] The player is tasked with traversing a network of tunnels, collecting and interacting with objects, engaging hostile and friendly creatures, rescuing survivors and ultimately defeating Triax and escaping from Phoebus.

When he reaches a point near death he is automatically teleported to a safe location previously designated by the player, or ultimately back to his orbiting spaceship.

The artificial intelligence features innovative routines such as creatures demonstrating awareness of nearby noises, line-of-sight vision through the divaricate caves and tunnels, and memory of where the player was last seen, etc.

For example, the player may experience difficulty when attempting to lift a heavy boulder across a windy shaft with a jet pack, or of trying to keep a glass of water from spilling while being pushed around by a pestering bird.

Henry Jackman composed the title music for the Amiga and Atari ST versions and Paddy Colohan remixed this for the CD32 release.

[5] This is achieved using a compact but highly tuned pseudorandom process with a fixed seed number to generate the majority of the caverns and tunnels – augmented with a few custom-defined areas.

The game mechanics and level design are broadly similar across all Exile versions but visuals and sound vary depending on the capabilities of each system.

Exile offers the option of playing an enhanced version of the game on a BBC Micro upgraded with a 16 KB page of sideways RAM.

Fuel and energy levels are sounded out by a series of chimes when a weapon is selected, and pocket contents can only be checked by putting items back into the player's hands to make them visible.

[7] It adds an on-screen status indicator and wider colour palette due to the extra RAM available but otherwise is a faithful port of the Acorn versions.

Amongst other digitised sound effects, the imps encountered in the cave system have a cry imitating Monty Python's infamous "Ni".