Awesome game! I guess that makes the first (and probably the last) game I've played in that genre. Completed the collection in about 2 hours. Would like to know how many math problems (microtransactions) I had to do and how much resources I spent on rolls/packs/lost battles. The battle system is frustrating and I don't know if that's by design or not. Being able to block and heal with hotkeys would make it significantly easier, but there's still RNG. Loved the visuals, the sound effects, the quotes, and the general look and feel.
There once was an rpg that had you move boxes around and fight random box encounters, and the battles were likewise just deducting each other's hp in turn with a rng. There was no dialogue I can recall. Basically similar spirit but I remember playing it in the mid 2000s.
I might be misremembering but your characters also had "spells," a menu for attacks but each attack was a random string of characters.
Could use a little more color. Countdowns (like the ones for packs and events about to expire) should be red and bold when they get close to 0
Use different colors for each type of currency.
Locked battle levels should still show what the prizes will be to encourage players to unlock them early.
I've accidentally purchased packs I was trying to trash. Probably a good idea to keep that though!
Prices for packs, early refreshes/unlocks should be based on the amount of currency you currently have. Charge people more if they're hording wealth. They can afford it and you'll profit when they're hurting for currency.
The price for early refreshes/unlocks should gradually increase over time at first if they are affordable to the player to make them feel like it's costing them to wait to spend their currency and then the cost can gradually start to decrease after a certain point. This encourages players to spend fast, and can cause them to end up spending more if they strategically wait unless they are willing to wait for the entire cool down.
Having costs that are constantly fluctuating are good for getting people to play higher prices too
If two or more packs in the shop are waiting on timers and a copycat pack comes up lower the odds of the other waiting packs being good ones unless the player can't afford them. Increase the odds of good packs appearing in the shop when the player can't afford them so that they spend more money (or in this case, work harder) to get the currency they need.
Right now my maim strategy for battles was to just pump high numbers. Detect this and lower the odds of 80s/90s pack and the number of copycats when 90s packs (or anything that looks like it's being being pumped) were the last packs used.
Events should be less frequent if the player has rolls available.
Timers should be longer in general.
If you use progress bars instead of telling the player the exact number of seconds before something becomes available/unavailable you can mess with that. Slowing things down a little or speeding them up when its to your advantage. For example when you detect that player is away or too idle.
Love this! I wanna make parody games of all the game genres I don't like now, just to tease.
This game is inspiring. And reinforces my previous view that gacha is a silly genre.
Yet somehow addictive. What a let down it was when I finally managed to unlock the best number, 69, and it was just another number like the rest of them, because what else would it be?
Do people like "gacha"? I thought people played games for the game experience, story, etc, and the gacha is just the monetization mechanic. It's like making a big deal out of paying $20 bucks a month, or buying loads of DLCs for example.
I've seen people stop wanting to play a game after they removed gacha mechanics for their monetization in favor of just a skin shop. There are legitimate addicts.
Generally speaking I think the allure of modern-day gachas is providing a near-premier gaming experience (like paid RPGs, open-world games, etc.) while being free-to-play, at the cost of slowly encouraging you to spend a lot of time and/or money to get better characters in order to actually keep up with the end-game content and/or PvP side of the game.
If you commit to playing the gacha for an extended period of time, the system of:
- daily rewards that encourages you to play for a couple minutes each day to get enough currency to get good characters from the gacha
- newer characters being better than older ones (in visual design appeal and/or power-level)
- harder end-game content requiring better rosters of characters (or more grind)
- sales on the premium currency used to pull
- the ol' sunk-cost fallacy
all combine to encourage players to spend money over time
In this regard, the game in the post obviously does not have the scope of a game that actually costs money, and doesn't have the goal of getting you to spend money, but it does cover the grind and gacha part of pulling for different rarity characters and such.
No, this is nothing like a real gacha game at all. Gacha games have a wide variety of mechanics, and can have significant depth to them. Trading card games were the original gacha games, and those have entire competitive scenes with tournaments, etc. (Magic the Gathering, Yugioh, Pokemon TCG). Digital gacha games are similar. In a real gacha game you aren't rolling for a static number, you're rolling for a package of numbers and modifiers and mechanics that feed into a complicated combat system, and there's tons of strategizing around how you combine different packages of numbers together in deckbuilding/teambuilding, plus the decision-making in the battles themselves.
Gacha is really just a monetization approach. The mechanics that accompany it are the real draw, and you can have card games, RPGs, tactics games, action games, etc.
The battle system is too rudimentary to capture the essence of gacha. Insofar as gacha lends itself to gameplay mechanics and not just monetization, deck/teambuilding is absolutely integral. Obviously, the game is a parody, but even as a parody I think it does a poor job of capturing that aspect of building and experimenting with your deck/team. Which is fine, not a criticism of a silly little app, but the person I was responding to asked if this is what real gacha games play like and why people play them and I do not believe this is sufficiently representative.
In fact, I would describe this as an idle game, not a gacha game. In other words, a gacha-themed Cookie Clicker reskin. The emphasis is on the gacha, but in a real gacha game, rolling gacha occupies <1% of the playtime, and this doesn't adequately capture how the gacha model intersects with real gameplay mechanics.
This is really clever and one of those projects that strikes the delicate balance of “I could’ve done this” and “actually no.” When I look more closely, the details (which I wouldn’t have nailed) sell it. The slow down as it lands on a number, the way it displays, etc.
It really does distill the whole experience down. It’s so reductive yet somehow it makes me want to keep playing. Honestly the more I think about it the more impressive it is.
I cannot believe how much time I spent playing this. In fact, I am still playing this! You have done such an amazing job with such a simple idea.
If I can, my only feedback is that the battle system is REALLY hard for me. If there were keyboard shortcuts to block I wouldn't complain, but having to mouse to block is too much. I ended optimizing by letting one on the left or right die and then praying I could block enough to kill the boss.
Same. I think it's probably easier on a touch screen than with mouse, but I'm stuck on level 10 for now. Maybe it's intentionally frustrating. Need to finish this level to unlock the last number I think, but I guess I've I've sunk enough time into it and will let it rest there.
59 comments:
Awesome game! I guess that makes the first (and probably the last) game I've played in that genre. Completed the collection in about 2 hours. Would like to know how many math problems (microtransactions) I had to do and how much resources I spent on rolls/packs/lost battles. The battle system is frustrating and I don't know if that's by design or not. Being able to block and heal with hotkeys would make it significantly easier, but there's still RNG. Loved the visuals, the sound effects, the quotes, and the general look and feel.
There once was an rpg that had you move boxes around and fight random box encounters, and the battles were likewise just deducting each other's hp in turn with a rng. There was no dialogue I can recall. Basically similar spirit but I remember playing it in the mid 2000s.
I might be misremembering but your characters also had "spells," a menu for attacks but each attack was a random string of characters.
On mobile, I would appreciate the numerical keyboard for the math problems.
This is actually a very well-polished game and I think you've definitely got that core gacha distillation down pat!
I love that you can solve math problems to unlock more rolls and that you can buy packs and then the "slicing" of the packs is very satisfying too.
If the battle has numeric controls for blocking and other actions (assigned to 1,2,3...) the game would be more fun to try and optimize.
Exactly, clicking on the buttons is so slow. I want to be able to use keyboard keys.
I am unable to assign different numbers to battle slots. On iOS I could just drag them, on firefox nothing seems to work.
OP, it would be fun to have a letterboxd / imdb list of all of the movies the quotes are from
unless i just got incredibly lucky and all of the numbers I rolled were movie related and other numbers have quotes from other places
You can't just have that. It won't feel good unless you unlock it with honest gacha!
Some suggestions and thoughts:
Could use a little more color. Countdowns (like the ones for packs and events about to expire) should be red and bold when they get close to 0
Use different colors for each type of currency.
Locked battle levels should still show what the prizes will be to encourage players to unlock them early.
I've accidentally purchased packs I was trying to trash. Probably a good idea to keep that though!
Prices for packs, early refreshes/unlocks should be based on the amount of currency you currently have. Charge people more if they're hording wealth. They can afford it and you'll profit when they're hurting for currency.
The price for early refreshes/unlocks should gradually increase over time at first if they are affordable to the player to make them feel like it's costing them to wait to spend their currency and then the cost can gradually start to decrease after a certain point. This encourages players to spend fast, and can cause them to end up spending more if they strategically wait unless they are willing to wait for the entire cool down.
Having costs that are constantly fluctuating are good for getting people to play higher prices too
If two or more packs in the shop are waiting on timers and a copycat pack comes up lower the odds of the other waiting packs being good ones unless the player can't afford them. Increase the odds of good packs appearing in the shop when the player can't afford them so that they spend more money (or in this case, work harder) to get the currency they need.
Right now my maim strategy for battles was to just pump high numbers. Detect this and lower the odds of 80s/90s pack and the number of copycats when 90s packs (or anything that looks like it's being being pumped) were the last packs used.
Events should be less frequent if the player has rolls available.
Timers should be longer in general.
If you use progress bars instead of telling the player the exact number of seconds before something becomes available/unavailable you can mess with that. Slowing things down a little or speeding them up when its to your advantage. For example when you detect that player is away or too idle.
This is very well done. Where are the microtransactions? You could be rich beyond your wildest dreams, dear author, if only you let me buy gems.
OP probably made this as a joke on Gacha but all the comments are unironically enjoying it(including me, I got a legendary 3rd on my 2nd roll)
Reminds me of NumberWang from Mitchell and Webb’s skits.
https://youtu.be/0obMRztklqU?si=CA5NWDE6FVSSM5Ih
This is pretty well done
Love this! I wanna make parody games of all the game genres I don't like now, just to tease.
This game is inspiring. And reinforces my previous view that gacha is a silly genre.
Yet somehow addictive. What a let down it was when I finally managed to unlock the best number, 69, and it was just another number like the rest of them, because what else would it be?
There are layers to this parody. Love it!
It's not a gacha essence unless there are numbers with increasingly sexy designs.
Oh you just didn't unlock 69 yet ;)
personally disappointed that it wasn't a legendary alongside 42
Stupid, sexy integers
Very fun! There seems to be an exception when using the 10-roll function that might need some attention.
Those lines of code are:Do people like "gacha"? I thought people played games for the game experience, story, etc, and the gacha is just the monetization mechanic. It's like making a big deal out of paying $20 bucks a month, or buying loads of DLCs for example.
Do people like slot machines at casinos?
I've seen people stop wanting to play a game after they removed gacha mechanics for their monetization in favor of just a skin shop. There are legitimate addicts.
I think some people do like the collection mechanics. And some games require specific team comps in order to beat the harder content.
idk i just like to play stuff like this where there is a random chance to get something rare
Business idea: turn this into a skinnable library and license it for a couple hundred to wannabe gacha peddlers.
Or make it more predatory and up the price to a couple thousand.
You got everything right. Impressive.
Having never played gacha games but getting a good laugh out of this, is this really a thing people play? How different is the real gameplay?
Generally speaking I think the allure of modern-day gachas is providing a near-premier gaming experience (like paid RPGs, open-world games, etc.) while being free-to-play, at the cost of slowly encouraging you to spend a lot of time and/or money to get better characters in order to actually keep up with the end-game content and/or PvP side of the game.
If you commit to playing the gacha for an extended period of time, the system of:
- daily rewards that encourages you to play for a couple minutes each day to get enough currency to get good characters from the gacha
- newer characters being better than older ones (in visual design appeal and/or power-level)
- harder end-game content requiring better rosters of characters (or more grind)
- sales on the premium currency used to pull
- the ol' sunk-cost fallacy
all combine to encourage players to spend money over time
In this regard, the game in the post obviously does not have the scope of a game that actually costs money, and doesn't have the goal of getting you to spend money, but it does cover the grind and gacha part of pulling for different rarity characters and such.
No, this is nothing like a real gacha game at all. Gacha games have a wide variety of mechanics, and can have significant depth to them. Trading card games were the original gacha games, and those have entire competitive scenes with tournaments, etc. (Magic the Gathering, Yugioh, Pokemon TCG). Digital gacha games are similar. In a real gacha game you aren't rolling for a static number, you're rolling for a package of numbers and modifiers and mechanics that feed into a complicated combat system, and there's tons of strategizing around how you combine different packages of numbers together in deckbuilding/teambuilding, plus the decision-making in the battles themselves.
Gacha is really just a monetization approach. The mechanics that accompany it are the real draw, and you can have card games, RPGs, tactics games, action games, etc.
You have all that with Gacha pulls and battle system.
The battle system is too rudimentary to capture the essence of gacha. Insofar as gacha lends itself to gameplay mechanics and not just monetization, deck/teambuilding is absolutely integral. Obviously, the game is a parody, but even as a parody I think it does a poor job of capturing that aspect of building and experimenting with your deck/team. Which is fine, not a criticism of a silly little app, but the person I was responding to asked if this is what real gacha games play like and why people play them and I do not believe this is sufficiently representative.
In fact, I would describe this as an idle game, not a gacha game. In other words, a gacha-themed Cookie Clicker reskin. The emphasis is on the gacha, but in a real gacha game, rolling gacha occupies <1% of the playtime, and this doesn't adequately capture how the gacha model intersects with real gameplay mechanics.
I think the idea is that many games in essence boil down to this. Gamified random number generators.
It's really well done, and hilarious.
There seems to be a graphical issue that makes the text very hard to read. It may be Firefox or my Dark Reader addon.
Quite a cool game! With a bit of refining and colours, I would say would be a hit!
Ha - I've thought about making something like this - good on you!
I love the sound design, and the dithered look is also great. Feels more polished than many "real" games.
I’m on level 11 and I’m now convinced the number 7 does not exist
The legit gacha experience
Wow. Surprisingly fun game. I got to level 7 before it became a bit too difficult
Love this and I'm addicted - wish there were hot keys in the battle
This is so silly, but I’m really enjoying it lol. If you wanted to add some extra juice, haptic feedback on the rolls would be super cool!
Fun! On iOS I can drag numbers into my battle team - it tries to refresh the page when I drag outside a very short range.
Edit - refresh fixed it?
I think roll 10 is broken...
Its so satisfying to play
Is there any way to decrease block cooldown??
Pulled a 100, A tier for PVE but still holding out for a 69 and a 42.
Don’t let your dreams be memes. Spend spend spend
That is addictive!
3rd pvp round is 852 and seems quite difficult
Seems to be a fair bit of luck as to whether the boss attacks the same number twice in a row, or maybe it's based on who attacked most recently?
Honestly the feedback loop of "do math to roll more" would make this an excellent game for kids IMO
I hate how addicted immediately got addicted to this game
Yeah, that's a scary way to lose 20 minutes...
20 minutes? Try an hour!
Help, it's 1 a.m. and I haven't eaten dinner!
This is really clever and one of those projects that strikes the delicate balance of “I could’ve done this” and “actually no.” When I look more closely, the details (which I wouldn’t have nailed) sell it. The slow down as it lands on a number, the way it displays, etc.
It really does distill the whole experience down. It’s so reductive yet somehow it makes me want to keep playing. Honestly the more I think about it the more impressive it is.
I cannot believe how much time I spent playing this. In fact, I am still playing this! You have done such an amazing job with such a simple idea.
If I can, my only feedback is that the battle system is REALLY hard for me. If there were keyboard shortcuts to block I wouldn't complain, but having to mouse to block is too much. I ended optimizing by letting one on the left or right die and then praying I could block enough to kill the boss.
Really great work! Seriously love this stuff!
Same. I think it's probably easier on a touch screen than with mouse, but I'm stuck on level 10 for now. Maybe it's intentionally frustrating. Need to finish this level to unlock the last number I think, but I guess I've I've sunk enough time into it and will let it rest there.