Incan Gold is a fast, fun press-your-luck game. Players travel down mine shafts or explore paths in the jungle by turning up cards from a deck and evenly sharing the gems they discover on the way, with any leftover gems being placed on the card. Before the next card is revealed, you have the choice to leave the mine and stash your holdings, including any gems you get on the way out.

Why leave? Because the deck also includes hazards: scorpions, snakes, poison gas, explosions and rockfalls. When a certain hazard is revealed for the second time (e.g., a second scorpion), anyone still in the shaft or on the path must drop all the gems they've collected that round and flee for safety. The trick is that as more players leave each turn, your share of the gems grow larger, which may perhaps inspire you to explore deeper — but at a risk of ending up empty handed.

All editions of Incan Gold offer five artifact cards that are shuffled into the deck of gem and hazard cards, either one per round or all together. When an artifact card is shown, no one can take this card and it's placed on the path. If exactly one player leaves at the end of a turn, they claim not only all gems that remain on the path, but the artifact too, which is worth points at the end of the game.