The basic premise of Just Get Through is to make it the end of as many procedurally-generated levels as possible before running out of lives. Levels begin with a brief glimpse of the portal's location before the camera quickly pans back to your starting position. If you're sharp enough, you might catch the location of some traps during that fly-by. You can jump, rebound off walls or blow away portions of your environment with TNT. This makes for some interesting gameplay decisions because you can choose to speed through the levels using wall jumps and precision platforming to get to the end, or take your time to plan an alternate route or create your own with TNT (being careful not to blow up platforms necessary to complete the level).

Each level is different, so you cannot familiarize yourself with the trap placements, but you will become familiar with their types and how to avoid each one. After every 2nd level you get to choose 1 of 3 upgrades which keeps things interesting. Some of them are really helpful e.g higher jumps or more checkpoints. The first few levels are easy but the difficulty spikes pretty quickly as levels become larger and larger and the traps become tricker. Wall jumping is vital to progress and it's tricky to get the hang of at first. There is a certain rhythm to it that will suddenly click with you after a little bit of practice.

Since the focus is on gameplay, graphics and music play a secondary role, although there are some nice particle and lighting effects, especially in Night Runs which have you creeping towards the portal in darkness with the help of flares and a glowing player character. Collectible color palettes can occasionally be found in treasure chests and each one totally changes the look of the game from the default black & white to "Glowing Blood" (black and red) or 68 other combinations of primary and secondary colors. They also change the explosions and lighting effects in a pretty cool way. I found a few of the palettes to be a little hard to play with when the 2 colors are similar, because traps will not be as distinguishable from the level itself. However the majority are a nice addition to the game.

Just Get Through's sole developer has been updating the game frequently and even adding new game modes long after the originally decided upon cutoff point. Most notably, the unexpected Winter 2015 update added a new game mode:

Explosion Run: a fun new mode based off the classic runs but with an added element of panic as you try to move quickly enough to escape the wall of explosions chasing you. If you like to take your time getting through the regular levels, this mode will literally put a fire under your ass and force you to make your decisions on-the-fly. Probably my favourite way to play the game!

Other gameplay modes include:

Set Run: Same as classic except the layout of the levels never change.

Hardcore Run: No compass to guide you to the exit, longer levels, fall damage and other handicaps. My first hardcore run was an eye-opener: sawblade traps, spinning axes and gatling guns covered almost every side of most of the blocks (see the video). Thankfully, subsequent renditions weren't so punishing! This is definitely a mode for the challenge seekers.

Coin Run: Collect precariously-placed coins and spend them on upgrades. Get hit and you'll drop some coins.

Survival Run: Get as far as you can with only 1 life and without health drops or upgrades.

Speed Run: Play with faster movement speed and easier jumping and aim for the fastest completion time.

Given it's pretty addictive core gameplay, fans of roguelkes and challenging platformers should extract more than their money's worth of fun from Just Get Through. If that still isn't enough replay value for you, try out the user created levels or have a go at making your own and track the performance of community members playing it.