Welcome to Neo-Chicago nightclub, a popular Chicago venue that has been open since 1979. Now meet Dann, the club's Barback. Dann is tasked to get the club ready to open by stocking the beer, filling up the ice coolers, and other various tasks. It seemed like an ordinary job until one day, the vile Rat King who rules the Rat Kingdom deep below the city decided to send his army of rats to the surface to invade the nightclub. Now Dann has to rid Neo of these pests so that the club can open up for business and if he fails, he'll get fired! Can you help Dann get through his workweek and rid the club of these pests?

Barback is a retro 1980s style arcade overhead run n' gun where the player has the freedom to run around the nightclub defeating various monsters and avoiding traps while collecting items to obtain points. The player must search the club for a key that will allow the player to move to the next section of the game. The overall goal is to play through the main character's workweek at the nightclub and defeat the vile rat king. Each stage is broken down into 3 parts and new enemies and traps appear as the player progresses through the game. The game also has various secret areas where the player can obtain extra lives and also get an extra life when obtaining a score of 30,000 points.

The game was designed with NESmaker. It was also designed to play like a game that was released back in the 1980s. The only difference is the game has an actual ending before looping so that the main character gets rewarded instead of just receiving a "game over" screen. The gameplay is pretty straight forward and easy enough to get through without too much frustration.