Imagine pulling out a card from a pack, not with a rare Charizard, but with an article about Brad Pitt. You send him into battle against a random Romanian village or a physics law.
Pokémon cards have some competition with the new game Wikipedia Gacha. The concept is addictive, simple, and based on classic “gacha” mechanics (a system of receiving random rewards). As explained by The Gamer, players get 10 free packs daily, each hiding five random cards—or rather, five real Wikipedia articles.
If you run out of packs, the system refreshes them every ten minutes. And if that’s not enough, after opening ten packs, you’re guaranteed a rare “secret rare” card.
This project is probably the largest collectible card game ever. It includes an incredible 6,746,498 different cards divided into seven rarity categories (from common to legendary). The rarity of a card is determined by the quality and rating of the article itself on wikirank.net.
Battles in the game are based on comparing attack and defense:
| Battle Method: | Calculated From: | Represents: | Limit: |
| Attack | Number of views on the Wikipedia article × rarity multiplier | Attack represents the fame of the Wikipedia article | 15,000 points |
| Defense | Text length of the Wikipedia article × rarity | Defense represents the detail of the Wikipedia article | 15,000 points |
This system creates absolutely absurd and funny gaming scenarios. You’ll find yourself in a bizarre matchup where your card of a small railway station in Mississippi is battling it out with a card of the 2022 American football season.
A Success That Crashed the Servers
The game is free, contains daily missions, and offers 40 unlockable achievements. Its only current issue is overwhelming popularity. The player interest is so massive that servers can’t keep up, and opening packs is often technically impossible. But once things settle down, Wikipedia Gacha has huge potential to become the next big internet obsession.
