Pataslocas is a low-life thief who also tried, without much luck, to become a boxer. One night, fate seems to turn on his side: he manages to steal a large sum from a bank, but is frightened by the distant sound of a siren (later it will turn out to be a false alarm). Stricken by panic, he throws the loot into the sewer manholes to hide it. He then dives into the tunnels beneath the city to retrieve the bags of money, without even imagining the risks he is about to face.

The player acts as the eponymous protagonist in a platform game divided into five levels, each one consisting of four screens. In each level you must find four money bags, then reach the exit. In addition to the labyrinthine structure of the levels and the presence of many types of dangers, such as bats, nails on the ground, rats, flooded areas and so on, you must collect some icons which allow you to perform some basic actions, required to proceed within the game. In fact, at the beginning of each level, Pataslocas can only move left and right. Icons increase his abilities, for example by enabling him to jump or to operate elevators. As if that were not enough, time is against you, as Pataslocas is going to die suffocated by the poisonous sewage fumes.

Collecting an oxygen tank will give him all the air he needs to avoid such an inglorious demise. Pataslocas is a platform/collect-em-up title with some puzzle elements. To negotiate the not very large, but intricate levels, it will be necessary to make use of all the skills that the character can acquire through the appropriate icons and understand which ones to use in order to overcome the obstacles that stand between you and your goal.

Featuring nice and colourful graphics, Pataslocas lets itself be played quite well, requiring a certain effort from the player in order to complete it. Being entirely programmed in BASIC, however, it is sometimes rather slow and this is particularly noticeable in an action game. However, the "thinking" aspect makes it stand out from the mass of similar titles and provides its most important quality.