Action Henk is a high-speed platformer in which the player has to race through short levels as quickly as possible. The gameplay is all about keeping the momentum going. The setup is very simple, but there are many subtle tricks that can be applied to shave off those precious seconds.

To facilitate this, all motion in the game is physics-based, and every player input has to do with managing acceleration and friction. This means that there are no hardcoded maximum speeds or velocities, there's only the application of force. As a result, jumping is also done through the addition of force, rather than setting a velocity by hand.