Move over Pokémon, Wikipedia card collecting is the new hotness (WikiGacha)
Fan site WikiGacha is already overwhelmed with traffic as it offers the joy of opening trading card booster packs without charging you a penny.
One of the big problems with collectible trading card games, like Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon, is that they’re a huge money sink if you want to play competitively or are a completionist.
That’s partially why Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket for mobile is so appealing. since you can earn cards daily for free, but the game still tries to tempt you to part with money. to more frequently open booster packs.
But the premise of an entirely free collectible card game is now a reality, thanks to one of the most charmingly strange fan creations we’ve seen in a while: a Wikipedia gacha game.
Labelled Wikipedia Gacha, or WikiGacha for short, and created by someone known only as Harusugi, the website lets you open up to 10 booster packs a day; each of which contains five cards.
You can open more packs by completing daily missions, like opening five packs or actually visiting Wikipedia, and there’s also an achievement list to complete.
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The cards don’t just exist to be collected, though, as the site has its own battle system. It’s not super complicated, but every card does have its own attack and defence stat.
However, you don’t build decks, you just pick one card to fight another and whichever depletes the other’s health first wins. So it’s more like Top Trumps.
Attack is determined by a Wikipedia article’s popularity, with the number of pageviews it has multiplied by the rarity of the card. Defence, meanwhile, is determined by the content length of an article multiplied by card rarity. So, the more popular and dense an article, the stronger its associated card.
The cards can literally be anything, from trains and politicians to fossils and award shows (WikiGacha)
As for how the game determines the rarity of each card, it’s based on another unofficial website, WikiRank, which grades Wikipedia articles on their popularity.
This is why, based on our own pulls, our anadasmus caliginea card is treated as a common card with low stats, while our Canadian Screen Award for Best Feature Length Documentary card is a Super Rare card with an incredibly high defence stat.
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Currently, there are options to have a random battle (it’s unclear if it’s against other players or just an AI opponent) or take on a raid battle, with the site promising plans for a story mode of consecutive battles.
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We weren’t able to open many packs or test the battle system out much, since the website seems to be struggling with heavy traffic at time of writing, but that’s go to see.
The simple act of opening booster packs is inherently moreish and since it’s all completely free, all you’re losing is time. Although there is an option to donate to the creator’s Buy Me A Coffee page.
Plus, with how many Wikipedia articles there are, there’s a surprise factor to seeing what cards you’ll obtain. What other game has cards based on author James Maxey, the 1986 Virginia Slims of Arizona tennis tournament, and Hurricane Waldo?
There are millions of Wikipedia articles so collecting a full set will take some time (WikiGacha)
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