In Catcha Snatch, the player takes the role of the store detective Barney Bootlace. He walks around the store, which is represented with one top-down screen, to do his job: guiding lost children back to their mom, bringing lost items to the lost property office, busting shoplifters and rushing bombs out of the door. Practically this boils down to touching the item/person in question and walking to the destination.

Barney's success is measured by his manager's approval from 0 to 99% The approval rises when Barney manages to handle an issue correctly and decreases when he misses something. If 99% are reached, Barney is promoted to the next level (and a higher difficulty) - however, a demotion and a written warning follows directly after falling to 0%. After three warnings the game is over, but one warning is removed for advancing two levels.