Humanity lost the big war against the alien empire and had to leave Earth and its solar system behind. Now, after over three hundred of hard life inside of space stations, they managed to build a small fleet of space ships and set out to find a new planet to call their own and destroy the empire in the process. The player takes the role of one of those ships.

Abaron is a vertically scrolling shooter: the player can move the space ship in four directions, shoot the equipped weapon in order to kill alien ships and dodge their bullets to avoid losing the ship's life-energy. Extra equipment has to be purchased by collecting credits chips which are left behind by pre-determined enemies. Depending on how many were gathered, another weapon is available for purchase with a button press, e.g. three credits give a pulse laser and seven credits a shield. Some of the weapons can be upgraded by buying them more than once and if the player has bought multiple weapons, they can be cycled through. When more than ten credits are collected, the count is set to zero and extra points for the high-score are rewarded, another way to improve the high score is to collect stars which are randomly left behind by killed enemies. The ship has only one life and there are no continues, but the game can be saved at the beginning of each level.