The player plays through each planet in turn collecting all the DNA crystals, grabbing the bonus fruit and scooping up all the power ups and bonus level tokens, to maximize their high score and earn the elusive "Perfect" ranking.

The player must play through six levels, racing to unlock the exits as quickly as possible, before the timer hits zero.

A split screen multi-player mode (same console/computer) is also available where two players compete to complete each level and win the game.

Space Ark was revealed in an IGN post mortem article about another Strawdog Studios game, Geon: Emotions.

[1] A teaser video trailer for Space Ark was included, which referred to the game under a working title of "Bounce".