Xevious is a vertical-scrolling shooter. The player controls a starship known as the Solvalou to destroy the Xevious forces, who plot to take over Earth.[3] The Solvalou has two weapons for combating enemies - an "air zapper" that fires projectiles at flying enemies,[4] and a "blaster bomb" for destroying enemies stationed on the ground.[4] The Solvalou also has a blaster reticle which will determine where the bombs will go to, used to destroy ground targets.[4]
Certain areas of the game will have a fight against the Andor Genesis mothership, which will launch an endless stream of projectiles and explosive black spheres known as "Zakatos".[4] The player can either destroy all four blaster receptacles or simply destroy the core in the center to defeat it.[4] Some parts of the game will have hidden towers known as "Sol Citadels", which can be found by bombing specific parts of an area[3] - these areas will cause the Solvalou's receptacle to flash red when flown over.[3] Yellow "Special Flags" from Namco's own Rally-X are also found in a semi-random section of the area - collecting it will award the player an extra life.[3]
The game has a total of 16 stages, known as "areas" in-game, which will loop back to the first after completing them all.[3] Dying about 70% through an area will allow the player to start at the beginning of the next.[5] These areas have large geographical features, such as forests, sand roads, rivers and mechanical structures - certain areas will also have Nazca lines placed on the ground, notably the "condor" design.[5] The game becomes progressively more difficult as the player becomes more skilled - once the player does well at destroying a certain enemy type, a more advanced enemy type will replace it;[5] this can be reverted by destroying flashing-red "Zolback" radars found on the ground, which will cause the more advanced enemies to instead be replaced with easier ones.
