Instead, when Dr. Bradley gets "killed" he awakes in hospital and time jumps forward as a penalty to reflect the time that has passed spending in bed. Alternatively, the player can try to avoid the penalty by succeeding in a hospital escape minigame, which also acts as a comic relief. The duration of one play-through can be about one hour. It will vary due to thinking, exploring and time spent with reading, time wasted ("skipped") from driving around and other factors. Early stages involve more dialogue and collecting clues, later it is more action-oriented; especially when the player succeeds in convincing the authorities to declare an emergency (this can be as early as the 6th day if the player collects four pieces of ant evidence, or as late as the 10th day if the player fails to collect all four pieces). Bradley's actions and decisions in the dialogue have an influence on the characters, and as a result, on the story, including (at least) two endings. "It Came From the Desert" utilizes different gameplay types, a hallmark of Cinemaware games. An "adventure" mode provides the overall structure and advances the plot. A main "action" mode is used to combat and defeat the ants. A collection of minigames cover special aspects of the narrative. The adventure mode is similar to a visual novel or adventure game (like ) and provides the overall structure, in which everything else is embedded. Except selecting the location in the overview, the game world is viewed from a first person perspective. It consists of: As typical for adventure games, progress is complicated by various smaller story arcs which Dr. Bradley can resolve. One of them involves a mysterious "Neptune" secret society and a murder case. There is also a romance plot. The nonlinear narrative comes about as it depends which location Dr. Bradley visits at what time, and whether he meets certain characters and whether he advances their story in time. The plot also involves making decisions which characters to meet, and support. At certain places or due to events, the game world switches into a top-down perspective and the player assumes control of Dr. Bradley to navigate him around in a finer detail (in the adventure mode he can only drive to a discrete locations shown by name on the overview). The entire game world is reproduced from this perspective, however earlier in the game only a smaller section is visible and relevant. It is commonly triggered when several ants are approaching, while the player is the "adventure" mode. The player must move Dr. Bradley away and escape from the ants which try to encircle him.