Kinect Nat Geo TV offers eight, 30-minute episodes from the America the Wild National Geographic TV series and combines it with interactive content, usually at the moment a commercial break would occur. Some of the content needs to be unlocked during the episodes while others are presented regardless of triggers by the player through the required Kinect peripheral. The different tasks performed by the player are rated with stars at the end of the episode, providing a medal. There are three types of activities for the player and these occur multiple times in a single episode. Most of them are mandatory, so it is not possible to watch the entire episode without interaction.

The first one relies on voice recognition and requires the player to shout a certain word when animal tracks appear on the screen. These are superimposed on the video and do not need to be recognized in the video itself. If all the tracks are called out at the right moment, the game presents additional, smaller episodes with more information at the next "commercial break". Sometimes a question is asked with two possible answers and the player uses the left or right arm to pick the correct one. If the tracks are not recognized, the additional content is not played.

The second type of activity has the player take photographs of animals. The game asks the player for something specific and a frame is superimposed on the screen. Once it appears, the player has to shout a word to take the snapshot. At the next "commercial break", the shots are shown together with pictures of the player.

The third type of activity is a mini-game that uses augmented reality to transform the play space visualized on the screen into the habitat of animals with a graphical overlay. In addition animal heads and limbs are superimposed on the body of the player. There are different types of mini-games similar to other Kinect games. Players need to pounce on preys, feed animals or swat away avengers with movement of the limbs. There are eight distinct games with four variations each. There is a separate mode to access the mini-games directly.

Provided along with the game is a one-year subscription to the Kinect Nat Geo TV Xbox 360 app. It contains additional features not present on the game disc and it contains the full episodes, so the disc is not required to play. In addition it offers access to many National Geographic shows. Both the game disc and the app contain achievements for 1,000 points each, but for exactly the same activities. For the download version it is possible to buy individual episodes instead of the complete season.