Gacha Life Review: Gameplay Features Explained

The role-playing game remains fun even in 2024. Odds are you've been hearing about Gacha Life for quite some time. This game appeals to lots of teens and adults for its fabulous character creation and customization. Whether you have played this game or not, this article will help you learn more about it in depth.

What Is Gacha Life?

Gacha Life, developed by Lunime in October 2018, is a popular role-playing mobile game that allows players to create and customize anime-style characters. The Japanese term "gacha" refers to miniature toys sold in tiny capsules through vending machines.

The game is popular among older kids and preteens since it lets them role-play as characters and create stories with their imagination. It also lets players personalize their character's looks, such as their eyes and hair, and select various attires and accessories.

The game gained significant popularity following its release, with millions of downloads from both app stores. It also became viral on platforms like TikTok and YouTube, where users make and share skits, animations, and stories about the Gacha Life.

Gameplay Overview of Gacha Life

Gacha Life offers a range of features to enhance the fun while gameplaying. Now, take a quick tour of them below and the gameplay features you'll encounter.

Gacha Life Characters Customization

The character creation system is one of the most notable features of Gacha Life. This feature appeals to casual gamers and those who enjoy creative storytelling (especially girls) because it lets players customize and bring their anime-style characters to life based on their liking. So, when you browse Reddit, you may also find that some users will post their own designed characters for other users to rate.

Each character can be created with a unique personality. Players can create personalized characters with options for hairstyles, eye shapes, facial expressions, outfits, accessories, and even poses. If you don't like the gender or character you choose, you can change it.

However, the only thing I don't like about this feature is I have to choose a "preset" character from its 20 character slots in order to customize and change it. Unlike other role-playing games, they generally offer a default suite of hairstyles, faces and clothing to let us design.

Basic Mechanics

With various gaming options, Gacha Life gives users multiple ways to express themselves artistically. Here are the main gameplay mechanics you can enjoy:

1Studio Mode

One of the main aspects of Gacha Life is Studio Mode, which gives users a sandbox setting to construct scenes using customized characters. Its key features include:

• It allows players to place up to 8 characters in a scene, enabling detailed interactions between characters.
• It provides hundreds of backgrounds and props to set the stage for their scenes.
• It allows enter custom text for the characters to have conversations and stories.

2Life Mode

Life Mode is the exploration-based aspect of Gacha Life, which combines elements of social interaction, exploration, and light role-playing. In this mode, players are allowed to walk around the Gacha Life world and visit different locations, such as beach, school, park, etc.

Not only that, players can come across different non-playable characters (NPCs) and interact with them in these locations. In my opinion, the interaction is so mechanized and boring. The NPC only outputs the preset languages once the player presses the "Talk" or "Ask" button. That is to say, the players have no option to text or chat with them. The interaction looks like a monologue.

In addition, players can choose to send a gift to the NPC to strengthen the virtual friendship. After the player reaches the Level 5 friendship with the NPC, a Quiz is available. The Quiz is an interesting interaction with the NPCs, where players can earn rewards from the given quizzes.

3Mini Games

Gacha Life's Mini Games gives players quick challenges and gameplay loops as a diversion from the game's creative and exploratory elements. With this mode, players can enjoy 8 mini-games with unique mechanics where they can collect as many virtual gems as possible while staying competitive in the race.

As the currency of Gacha Life, the gems can be used to purchase gifts and recover Stamina quickly. Therefore, if you want to level up the friendship with NPCs in the Life Mode, earning gems is suggested before doing so.

For me, the only catch about mini-games is there are only 8 games, which can be repetitive and boring. So, if possible, Gacha Life can add new games, new gameplay, or increase the difficulty.

4Skit Maker

Imagine that you are a director, and you are creating your mini-stories by combining your favorite characters, dialogues, and scenes. How exciting it would be! And Gacha Life's Skit Maker makes your imagination come true!

This feature provides creative freedom for the development of unique narratives and scenes. It allows players to select multiple characters from the slots, pick and customize different backgrounds and music for scenes, and write custom dialogues to make the story come to life.

Furthermore, players can assign their characters different poses, expressions, and movements and seamlessly transition between different scenes. After completing the skit, players can preview, test and save it.

In my opinion, this feature stands out in enhancing the player experience. Certainly, it would be nice if there were more characters in one scene. (Because currently, players can only add two characters in one scene at most)

Scene And Sound

As Gacha Life is best known for its creation and customization capabilities, it lets users put their characters in various scenes. Players can have 600 background options to customize the game homepage scenes. The visual style of these backgrounds is either straightforward, vibrant, or tilling, so players can have different backdrops and accessories to improve the narrative.

Regarding the sound, the whole game's sound design uses upbeat background music and subdued sound effects. Of course, the BGM varies based on different game modes, which helps establish the mood for various scenarios, increasing immersion. But overall, it sounds brisk.

Gacha System (In-app Purchase)

Gacha Life's Gacha system is a gem-based in-game currency. It revolves around collecting gems, which can be used for unlocking various rewards, such as arbitrary props, costumes, and gifts.. I consider this feature to be motivational for players.

Players can perform various activities to earn gems, including mini-games to earn gems based on their performance. Daily log-in can also provide free gems. You can also watch in-game ads and complete in-game quests to earn gems.

Surely, Gacha Life also encourages users to purchase gems. The following screenshot shows how much this game charges users for gems:

Since gems are the game's primary currency, you can spend them on various in-game items. Players can use them to customize their avatars and scenes and purchase new hairstyles and expressions. They can also buy specific outfits, props, or accessories.

Target Audience of Gacha Life & Is It Safe for Kids

Target Audience of Gacha Life

According to a Reddit user (whose sister is obsessed in Gacha Life), "As for demographics, I think it's mostly used by younger teens/tweens, since my little sister is in that category and has friends who are also obsessed with Gacha Life videos. I'm an older teen, and no one in my circle seems to know what Gacha Life is." That's it; this mobile game is popular among kids and teens.

The Google Play store has rated Gacha Life for ages 3+, and in the App Store, it is rated for ages 9+. Judging from this age rating, the target audience of Gacha Life is young users. So, you might be thinking about whether Gacha Life is safe for kids or teens.

Is Gacha Life Safe for Young Users

After thoroughly exploring all the features of Gacha Life, we can conclude that it is safe for children. All the mini-games and mechanics are kid-friendly without violent or sexual themes. It even removed the chat option. After this, users are not able to interact with other Gacha players anymore, which cuts off all the possibilities of online cyberbullying and harassment and enhances privacy.

With no lousy content or competitive features, young players can create and interact with chibi-style characters as well as innocent NPCs in various circumstances within the game itself.

Despite the game's kid-friendly nature, be mindful of user-generated content related to this game, particularly on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. One particular area of concern is Gacha Heat, a term used to describe user-generated videos.

Often created by fans, ⛔Gacha Heat videos⛔ usually take advantage of the outfits and poses provided by Gacha Life to create characters or stories in inappropriate or sexualized scenarios. Due to this, Gacha Life even cut out suggestive poses, clothes, and other items.

Even so, these offensive and sexual videos are proliferating on YouTube and TikTok. And searching for or watching Gacha Heat videos can disseminate harmful ideas about relationships, sexuality, and body image that are inappropriate for young audiences.

For this, parents or guardians should talk to their kids about what they see and teach them the distinction between good and bad internet information. If it is necessary, parents can also use AirDroid Parental Control to monitor or restrict access to potentially offensive Gacha Heat videos.

Differences Between Gacha Life And Gacha Life 2

When you search for Gacha Life, you may find there is another choice called Gacha Life 2. This time, you may confused whether they are the same one. In truth, Gacha Life 2 is an eagerly awaited sequel to Gacha Life and consists of additional features, better customization options, and improved gaming dynamics. It provides players with a more refined experience while keeping the core elements of the first game.

Here are the differences between Gacha Life and Gacha Life 2:

Gameplay Interface

The original version interface was horizontal while the new one is vertical.

Character Customization

While the original game consisted of hundreds of customization options for hairstyles, clothing, and accessories, the sequel has taken it to the next level with thousands of those. It even allows users to adjust subtle features like body proportions and skin tones. But there are very few pose options in the sequel.

Character Slots and Presets

The original version restricts players in terms of the number of characters they can create and save. However, the sequel offers more character slots, allowing players to create and store more characters without deleting old ones.

Studio Mode

In Gacha Life, studio mode allows players to position their characters, change their poses, and make skits using preset backdrops. However, in Gacha Life 2, players can add up to 16 characters and access more backgrounds, prop placement, and advanced scene transitions.

Expanded Life Mode

In the Life Mode of Gacha Life, players can explore and interact limitedly with non-playable characters. But Life Mode in Gacha Life 2 features more interactive environments, better NPC dialogue options, and side quizzes.

Final Thoughts

Gacha Life's distinctive fusion of creativity and chance, which combines aspects of character customization, role-playing game modes, various gameplay, and social simulation, has struck a deep chord with its predominantly young audience.

Although Gacha Life is committed to giving kids and teens a secure environment, parents and guardians should be aware of Gacha Heat videos on video streaming platforms. This user-generated content type is not appropriate for kids as it contains hypersexualized and provocative scenes or explicit narration.