Island of Secrets is a typical early text adventure. The player, as a character named Alphan, must find a number of special objects of power and bring them to the starting location. This is required to restore warmth and life to the Earth. Twists to the standard formula is that the game comes with a turn limit which puts pressure on the player and his or her decisions of where to go. The player also has a strength and wisdom value. They both go down with each turn. Strength requires consumption of food to restore and wisdom can only be restored by solving puzzles. The game uses a text parser that the player uses to input commands to explore the island.

The game supports saving and loading.