Your goal is to traverse the overworld and defeat a Guardian at either the Ice Gate or the Fire Gate to get to either the FROST Forest or the FLAME Forest, respectively.

Along the way you will fight enemies that will increase your Sparkle, Shimmer, or Aura essence. Once you reach level 1, a Stance card of that essence will be automatically added to your deck, and the higher your essence level, the stronger the Stance effects will be.

If you are not in a stance, unused speed will be converted to 3x block next turn. If you are in Sparkle Stance, gain +3 might per turn, and unused speed will convert to 3x might next turn. If you are in Shimmer Stance, gain +10 block and +1 armor per turn, and unused speed will convert to 4x block and 1x armor next turn. If you are in Aura Stance, gain +1 mana per turn, and unused speed will convert to mana next turn.

You will also come across Magic Fountains and Quests that will aid you in your journey. You must prove your worth and unlock the Gates by fighting at least two Arenas with powerful enemies.

Courage Coins are gained by winning combats and are used as currency for buying items at the market. You can always hover over things to get more information about them, such as the meters at the top that show your Aggro and Crit levels.

During combat, your Speed determines how many cards you can draw per turn. Mana is used to play your cards. Some cards can be combined, which does not cost mana.

Aggro amount increases by 1 after each combat. Each aggro level increases monster blocks in the FROST forest and monster attacks in the FLAME Forest, and also highly increases Arena and Guardian attacks. The more aggro you create, the faster your aggro level will increase. Level 1: 75% increase to FROST Forest blocks and FLAME Forest attacks (increasing by 25% for each level), 150% increase to Arena and Guardian attacks (increasing by 50% for each level).

Crit percentage, which increases by 1 for each attack card played, is the chance an attack is a critical hit (damage * 1.5). Crit percentage resets to 0 after a critical hit.

Armor absorbs 50% of incoming attack damage.

After each battle you have a chance of being rewarded with a Treasure, some Essences, some Shards, and a Candy. These chances increase with each battle, and your current reward chances can be seen at the bottom of the screen.

You can play cards to charge up your Magic Rainbow. Each time your rainbow charges to full, it activates and does damage to your foes. The type of magic summoned dictates how you apply damage. Your magic type becomes Muddled when you mix magic types. Rainbow magic does damage to all monsters, Elemental magic does damage to all monsters ignoring block, Dark magic does damage to all monsters ignorning armor, Chaos magic does triple damage to a random monster, and Muddled magic does damage to a single random monster.