DOME is based on Shizuko Natsuki's novel of the same name. The original work as well as the game's plot focus on the construction of a nuclear shelter called "The Dome", capable of protecting humans from an impending atomic war. The player takes the role of an employee in an advertisement company, whose job is to raise people's awareness of the shelter's importance, and donate money to the project. The game opens System Sacom's Novel Ware series, demonstrating its concept. Though its basic gameplay is that of a puzzle-less Japanese-style adventure, the game has extended dialogue and text descriptions that either do not contain any interaction or occasionally prompt the player to make a choice. Despite this visual novel-like feature, the game still retains considerable portions of interactivity, with verb-object commands, reviewing information concerning recent events and characters in the game, and even the possibility to take and examine objects. The game's graphics consist of digitized photos of people and objects, and are rather sparse.