Pitman is a puzzle game. The player manoeuvres the player, an anthropomorphic cat, to navigate a room while clearing obstacles and kicking monsters and ghosts off the screen. Once the player has knocked all of the enemies off the screen, he advances to the next level. Advancement can prove difficult for the player as increasingly intricate obstacles are presented to overcome all of the monsters and ghosts. Arguably, the easiest route to solve the problem is through trial and error. A player may try one combination of manoeuvres by moving the obstacle in one direction, then he may find himself trapped. The player can hit the 'A'-button to reverse his movements and try again in a different way until he finds the solution that enables him to access all of the baddies to knock them off the screen. Trial and error seems to make up a large portion of the game. Players can also create their own mazes.

There are 100 levels for the player to clear, each one more difficult than the last meaning more room for error and therefore typically take longer to complete. The first level involves no obstacles with one monster on the opposite side of the screen to knock off; the last level involves a blockade of boulders and a conundrum of ladders for the player to move and navigate to clear several floating ghosts, it is the hardest level with the smallest margin for error.

The game concept was originally created in 1985 on a MZ-700 home computer by Yutaka Isokawa. The BASIC listing of the game was published in the August 1985 issue of the magazine "Oh!MZ Publications". The popularity of the game caused it to be picked up for Game Boy conversion in 1990. In the Game Boy version there is a nod to the MZ-700 version, the layout of round 77 is a big M and Z. In 2004 it was released for I-mode mobile phones as Pitmania and Pitmania 2, with graphics more similar to the original MZ700 game. Pitmania 1 Infinite was released in 2007, which had improved and more colorful graphics. A version was released for the Nintendo 3DS in the 3DS eShop in October 2011.