Magi Nation

In Magi-Nation, the player takes control of the new kid in town, Tony Jones, just as he is dared to find a crystal in the local cave. After finding the crystal, the cave collapses, drawing Tony into a world called the Moonlands filled with monsters called Dream Creatures. With the help of the eccentric inhabitants of these magical lands, Tony must save their world from invading Dark Magi as well as try to find a way back to his own.

The gameplay is a turn based RPG, with play time split between battles and overworld traversal with some light puzzle elements. The player collects and trains Dream Creatures in order to battle them against NPC enemies in the style of Pokémon. Your Dream Creatures grow stronger with experience but the game does not feature evolution, so collecting new Dream Creatures in each new area becomes a key gameplay loop because of power creep.

The player battles enemies in a turn based system, with each duelist able to summon up to four Dream Creatures at a time. The battle screen has a superficial resemblance to a tabletop card game setup, but in reality functions quite like Pokémon video game battles. That is, the player is always in control of which moves your own Dream Creatures perform on each turn, as well as what Tony himself does; there is no element of random card draw as would be seen in the physical tabletop versions of either franchise.

Other gameplay features include spells for Tony to use in battle, artefacts to be sought out and used as equipment for Dream Creatures, and secret, legendary Dream Creatures called hyrens to find to complete your collection. Just when you think you are done, there is also a New Game+ mode that unlocks additional secrets.