Stairways takes place at a bar, and the objective is to collect 7 pieces of the legendary amulet of the great budgie WONGA. Along the way, you shoot down hallucinations and avoid knocking over the other patrons' drinks.

The player character has three attributes, energy, hunger and how drunk he is. The hallucinations zap your energy and if he throws over a glass, the doorman comes over and kicks him out, resulting in a loss of a life.

If sobering up, it gets harder to keep the hallucinations at bay, by projecting thought bubbles at them. In order to maintain intoxication, the player can visit the bar to get more drunk, and hunger can be quenched at the burger kiosk to stave off starvation.

If you have collected all the pieces when a timer goes to zero, you move to the next level