Do all roads lead to gacha? It feels like an inevitability, the endpoint of the universe. When there is nothing but a handful of atoms left, the rolls will keep on coming. It’s destiny! That’s the only explanation I have for Wikipedia Gacha, a simple browser game that truly is what it says on the tin. Let me explain it for you anyway.

Upon booting up the game, you are met with an image of a pack of trading cards with the Wikipedia logo on it. You tap on the pack, and it is sliced upon, revealing its contents: five cards that are based on Wikipedia pages you have probably never visited in your life, each with their own attack and defence points, brief descriptions, occasional images, and of course, because what is gacha without this, varying rarities.

One pack you may open a card for Hess, Oklahoma, an uncommon card. The next you pull the lowest of all rarities, a common. It’s Wolfgang Pickl. You think, the next pack. That’ll have the SSR rarity Viking activity in the British Isles card you’ve been searching for, with its 7569 attack points and 11,990 defence points… A sense of peace washes over you as it enters your collection.

It goes beyond simply collecting, too. This is a trading card gacha, there are battles to be had, of which there are currently three modes to choose from. You can do a single random battle, where you pick a card and pit against a random opponent, the rarity of your choosing.

There’s team battle, where you pick five cards to make a team with, pitting them against another team of the same, hoping your cards come out on top (you have zero control over the actual fighting). And there’s the daily raid battle, where you can take on a single powerful boss using 10 cards a bout, with the HP that you chip away at staying depleted from round to round. Today’s boss is the UR rarity card Slovak Air Force. I could not beat it.

You have daily missions to complete which net you two bonus packs upon completion, or just wait one real-world minute for another pack to replenish. Every 10 packs you get a gold one, which guarantees an SR+ card. By the way, rarities are determined by the various articles’ Q-Score, a very real rating system that determines how good Wikipedia articles are. There’s even achievements! It has all the makings of a video game, and has the added benefit of being completely free. No whale exploitation to be found here.

Wikipedia Gacha, which you can try for yourself here, is gacha at its best: consequence free, a bit silly, yet still uncomfortably compelling. Happy rolling, intrepid pullers.