The game follows archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft, who is hired by businesswoman Jacqueline Natla to find an artefact called the Scion of Atlantis.

Gameplay features Lara navigating levels split into multiple areas and room complexes while fighting enemies and solving puzzles to progress.

[8] The game automatically switches to a different camera view at key points, either to give the player a wider look at a new area or to add a cinematic effect.

In addition to standard movement using tank controls, Lara can walk, jump over gaps, shimmy along ledges, and swim through bodies of water.

Breaking into Natla's offices to find out Pierre's whereabouts, Lara discovers a medieval monk's diary, and learns that the Scion is a powerful artefact composed of three pieces, which were divided between the three rulers of the ancient continent of Atlantis, and one of these pieces is buried alongside former Atlantean ruler Tihocan, beneath an ancient monastery, St. Francis' Folly, in Greece.

Lara escapes and stows away aboard Natla's yacht, which takes her to a volcanic island holding an Atlantean pyramid filled with monsters.

Lara faces Natla, who reveals that she intends to use her army to push forward humanity's evolution, as she believes both Atlantis and current civilisation are too soft to withstand disaster.

The entire staff approved, and Heath-Smith gave Gard permission to start the project once he finished work on BC Racers for the Sega CD.

[19][20] Gard worked with Paul Douglas on fleshing out the concept and design and doing pre-production for six months, before the team expanded to six people including programmers Gavin Rummery and Jason Gosling, and level designers/artists Neal Boyd and Heather Gibson.

[18][23][25] When Gard first presented the idea for the game, the concept art featured a male lead who strongly resembled Indiana Jones.

[20] Lara's notably exaggerated physical proportions were a deliberate choice by Gard, as he wanted a caricatured personification of women who could be an action icon for the younger generation.

[23][32] Gard and Douglas created the basic story draft alongside the initial game design, then Arnold turned it into a script after joining the project.

Boyd and Gibson immersed themselves in literature and history about each culture for the first three areas, respectively inspired by the Inca Empire, Classical Greece and Ancient Egypt.

[23] Core Design and Sega made the deal during the last few months of development, so the team had to finish up the Saturn version six weeks earlier than they had planned, forcing them to work even longer hours.

[23] The team never received Nintendo 64 development kits,[23] and the port was scrapped when Sony finalised a deal to keep subsequent Tomb Raider games exclusive to PlayStation until the year 2000.

[41] For the majority of the game, the only audio heard is action-based effects, atmospheric sounds, and Lara's own grunts and sighs, all of which were enhanced because they did not have to compete with music.

[49] An attempt was made by Realtech VR to remaster the first three Tomb Raider titles for Windows, but due to not having asked permission from then-franchise owner Square Enix first, the project was cancelled.

[54][55] The two new areas were dubbed "Unfinished Business", set within the ruins of the Atlantean pyramid; and "Shadow of the Cat", which saw Lara exploring a temple in Egypt dedicated to the goddess Bastet.

[78][81][83][90] Ryan MacDonald of GameSpot described the game having the puzzle solving from Resident Evil, the gory action of Loaded, and the ability to have a 360-degree freedom in the gameplay.

MacDonald wrote that its graphics were sharper[78] and GamePro scored it half a point higher than the Saturn version in every category despite noting the former's "solid showing".

[6] Next Generation reviewed the PC version of Tomb Raider Gold, rated it three stars out of five, and wrote that it was a suitable purchase for series newcomers, with old players being more likely to download the levels from the game website.

[102] In August 1998, the game's computer version received a "Platinum" sales award from the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD), while its PlayStation release took "Gold".

[107][108] In 1999, Next Generation listed Tomb Raider as number 22 on its "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that the level design and art direction enabled a real feeling of exploration and accomplishment.

[112] In 1999, Toby Gard and Paul Douglas won the Berners-Lee Interactive BAFTA Award for best contribution to the industry for their work creating the franchise.

[17] Under pressure from Eidos Interactive, Core Design would develop a new Tomb Raider annually between 1997 and 2000, putting considerable strain on the team.

Releasing to poor critical reception and lackluster sales, Eidos Interactive transferred the franchise to another development studio they owned, Crystal Dynamics, who would reboot the series in 2006 with Tomb Raider: Legend.

[12][19][24] The level of sophistication Tomb Raider reached by combining state-of-the-art graphics, an atmospheric soundtrack, and a cinematic approach to gameplay was at the time unprecedented.

[12][37][116] While Gard enjoyed working at Core Design, he wished to have greater creative control, and disliked Eidos's treatment of Lara Croft in promotional material, which focused on her sexuality at the expense of her in-game characterisation.

In 2016, developer Timur "XProger" Gagiev began work on OpenLara, an open source port of the original Tomb Raider engine.

The further development of this project enabled Tomb Raider to be ported to many modern and legacy systems, such as the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, 32X, the Xbox, iPhone, and the Nintendo 3DS.