NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams unfolds in Nightopia, the spectacular dream world of two young characters, Helen and Will. Struggling to overcome the every day challenges of growing up, these two 12-year-olds find their real life experiences spilling over into their dreams. As Helen and Will fall into a deep sleep, they are greeted by NiGHTS, a fantasy jester, who leads them to explore the rich and vibrant land of Nightopia. Along the way, NiGHTS helps the youngsters bravely face their fears by finding inventive ways to confront, outpace, and outwit foes — such as the villainous Nightmarens. Through the freedom of flight, execution of stunning acrobatic moves and tapping into special abilities that enable gamers to combat danger and restore peace to Nightopia.

At launch, NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams will also feature a two-player mode, network support and reawaken the Artificial Life (A-Life) feature in NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, which gives gamers the freedom to oversee and develop their own sandbox environment enabling them to capture, raise, and even combine the inhabitants from the world of Nightopia.

Persona masks are one of NiGHTS' new special features. While playing the story as Will or Helen, the player can find masks called Personas hidden within treasure chests. There are three types of Persona masks: Dolphin, Dragon, and Rocket. Each of these allows transformation into its own form, and each form has its own special properties and unique abilities. Once you find a Persona, you can use it whenever you like. Since you can choose to use it anywhere, the fun is in trying to think of where in a given stage those abilities would be most useful.

Dolphin Mask:

The Dolphin Persona mask gives NiGHTS to transform into a dolphin. Normally, NiGHTS cannot swim underwater, using the dolphin mask will give the NiGHTS ability to go underwater finding new paths to explore that were unreachable before.

Rocket Mask:

With the Rocket Persona, NiGHTS is able to assume the form of a rocket. As you might expect, the main attribute of a rocket is speed! Instead of NiGHTS' usual graceful flight, you can now blast full speed ahead! When used properly, this increased speed can be used to reach rings and other items further away.

Dragon Mask:

The Dragon Persona mask, NiGHTS can become a dragon. While the speed compared to other Personas is much lower, NiGHTS instead becomes unaffected by either wind or gravity, enabling NiGHTS to move through the air freely. Now, wind currents that might have kept NiGHTS at bay before will pose no obstacle.