1001 Arabian Nights is a timed match-3 puzzle game that features stories and themes from the popular Middle Eastern "One Thousand and One Nights" (i.e., "Arabian Nights") folk tales. Scheherazade, the wife of a paranoid and mad king, tells stories to her husband to distract him from his fears and protect her life. Across 30 levels, the player helps her tell the stories by collecting pieces of items on checkerboards via match-3 gameplay.
On a scroll-style map, the game divides the stories based on moon phases across several months. Each level represents a single phase. The player aligns gemstones in lines of three matching gems to create gaps on the board that allow the item pieces to slide down the columns and off the bottom.
Each piece fills an empty area in the upper-left corner. The game ends when the player collects all the pieces or time runs out when a lamp in the upper-right corner runs out of oil.
1001 Arabian Nights provides the player with several methods for collecting the pieces faster. For example, if the player performs match-4 instead of match-3 maneuvers, they eventually charge the lower-left corner Magic Pot that randomly clear gems.
The player can also use other special powerful magic tools below the board, including the Bomb of Sinbad the Sailor to remove gems in a blast zone, the Lightning of Malice to remove one type of gem from the entire board, the Silver Moon of Queen Zumurrud to swap two pieces, and the Hourglass of King Shahryar to add 30 seconds to the hourglass.