Youko made up her mind to spend some money so she could progress. To get more characters, you had to spend money on the gacha. A gacha is a common game system where you exchange in-game points for random characters and items. The random factor is key. Players have to pull from the gacha over and over until the character they need pops out. If they do, the production company makes bank. Whoever invented this system was a genius.
Evo Gals had three types of gacha. The normal outfit gacha, the premium outfit gacha, and the Girls gacha. The normal outfit gacha gave low rarity clothes and the premium outfit gacha gave high rarity clothes, but the Girls gacha gave out characters. Pulling from the normal outfit gacha wasn’t that hard. You could use the Hourglass points from events or level ups to pull it quite often. But pulling from the premium gacha or the Girls gacha was much harder. You had to use special points called “Infinite Hourglass” to pull from them. Ways to obtain Infinite Hourglass points were much more limited than regular Hourglass points. When you first started playing, they’d give you some as your daily login bonus, but the rate at which you received them gradually slowed down until you had to login every day for an entire month to get any. Infinite Hourglass points were also handed out during special events or to make up for server outages on the admin side, but the fastest way to get some was to whale. You exchanged real world money for points that let you pull the gacha in the game world. Whatever, she thought, it’ll be fine. It cost about 500 yen to pull once from the Girls gacha. That was the price of a fast food meal. Not exactly breaking the bank. No big deal.
Youko made her purchase without worrying about it. She had money saved. She’d only graduated and gotten a proper job a year ago, but none of her hobbies cost money, and all she did on her days off was lie around and watch anime, so she’d put a decent amount away. Here she was with a job and money. She’d wanted a chance to use the power those things gave her but hadn’t found the right opportunity. This was the perfect chance.
When she pulled from the Girls gacha, the character she got was Meganeura-chan. Based on a giant 70 cm-long dragonfly that had lived in the Carboniferous period, the design featured a girl wearing glasses, a rather lame play on ‘megane’, the Japanese word for glasses. She was ‘rare’, which might seem valuable, but that was actually the second lowest rarity. Evo Gals character cards came in six types: Normal (N), Rare (R), Super Rare (SR), Ultra Rare (UR), Legendary Rare (LR) and God Rare (GR). It was only worth celebrating from at least Super Rare. Unfortunately, Meganeura-chan was also not good in low oxygen conditions. The Carboniferous Period was a time in Earth’s history with above average oxygen.
Whatever. First tries always ended up that way. She’d just pull a second time. She tapped her phone, and another 500 yen were automatically withdrawn from Youko’s bank account and installed on her phone’s screen. What appeared was an illustration like a pile of unraveled springs. It said, “Protein.” A miss. She’d got nothing, just a material item she could use to level up!
“Arghhh!” Youko yelled. This result pissed her off, but rather than quit, she started pulling faster. 1000 yen, 2000 yen, 3000 yen. Gradually increasing the amount she spent at one time. Before she realized it, she’d dropped 10,000 yen on the game. In the end, out of twenty pulls, she ended up with 15 proteins, 4 Normal, and just that one Rare. And no characters who resisted low oxygen.
“Why!? Whyyyyy!?” Her voice rasped. She’d thought it would all work out if she just spent money.
Then Youko noticed the words ‘100-pull gacha’ in the corner of the screen. Apparently, if you pulled 100 times at once, you were guaranteed at least 5 Super Rares. Score! And it was a limited time offer. If she spent 50,000 yen, she’d automatically get five SR characters for free. She had to pull. No other choice was even possible.
This is how Youko’s spendthrift mobile game life began. Evo Gals had more modes than just Adventure Mode. There was also Ranking Mode, where you tested your strength against players from all across the country. And by strength, it meant how much money you’d spent. No matter how well you played, if your party were all N, your score would be tragic. Youko had whaled pretty hard, so even as a new player she landed in the top 20,000. Given the ten million total players, that felt great. Something to be proud of.
Beyond the rhythm game was a function that let you use the characters as models. It consisted of designing outfits to fit a theme and putting your Girls on stage. You could get Likes from other players, and if you scored well, you would get high rarity clothes as a prize.
Youko kept spending money. Getting high rarity cards only made her want to spend more money. This was because if you got the same card twice, you could Evolve them into a stronger character. Additionally, there were skills that only activated if you had a complete set of the same type of clothing. Clothing items came in five types — tops, bottoms, inners, outers, and accessories. If you weren’t wearing all five of the same type, the skills wouldn’t work. The more she pulled from the gacha, the higher she climbed, and the more money she needed to spend. To justify the cost of what she’d already paid, she had to keep spending more.