I really, really like Gacha, okay?

Here from the mobage depths, Ducky Raincoat Musluca!

I sadly didn’t get this card when the event ran, but luckily, you don’t actually have to have the card to examine card art.

Gropehands Omi to Zombie Omi should be one of those things where I try to bloom the card...

But I’ve also grown surprisingly fond of how terrible this is.

Sometimes I want someone to explain Rinri to me.

I finally awakened choco Soichiro!

It’s been months (this post has also been sitting in queue for months tho. at this point if this hits you know I’m hitting end of queue. oops) so I kind of forgot what the awakened card looked like and yeah, if I’m honest, I prefer the unawakened card more.

Over in SINoALICE, we have more Kimono costumes! This year, Snow, Aladdin, and Kaguyahime get to be dressed up.

Actually, for the first three days of the gacha, you could also get Alice, Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella from last year’s batch - but by the time this posts the gacha should be featuring these three.

And I suppose for the first (real) post of the year, I’d like to share something special.

A different game. With different characters.

This is Demimen, an action RPG for your phones that also plays a little bit like a strategy game. Your featured heroes: men/boys who are half-monster.

Okay, not all of them are (see the bottom three), but the most interesting ones definitely are (like the middle three).

And then there’s my favorite up top - Trap. He’s a Mimic, a man-eating monster that usually looks like a fake chest overflowing with jewels, to the annoyance of many an adventurer.

He’s just hanging out like it’s perfectly normal for him to be a head in a box.

Happy New Year, everyone! A3! handed all players this Tenma card yesterday, you know, just to make sure you’re really in the spirit.

And on that note, posts are going to get sporadic here now, as this year I’m going to try and trim back my mobage lifestyle to work on developing a different passion hobby I’ve been mulling over. The queue still has a few things loaded, and until I figure out a better solution for quick posting - whether it’s another social media service or Tumblr fixes its shit with mobile photo posting, I might pop up now and then for a post.

And at the end of the year, here’s my current status in mobage. (Feel free to compare to the beginning of the year!)

A3!: by far and away my most played game this year, I can’t believe I went up 112 levels... I won’t lie, there were times I considered spending money on this game in these past twelve months - haven’t yet, but sometimes I think I’m breaking. Rank 246, featuring Fushimi Omi.

Stand My Heroes: In contrast, I totally stopped playing Sutamai towards the end of the year. The UI changes got finalized early on this year, and we got the introduction of Seo Labs to the cast, with my new favorites. At the very least, I can definitely say I like Ikuto as opposed to being vaguely into Sosei. I do want to get back into this game, honestly; Match-3 are easy time sucks. Featuring Saotome Ikuto.

On Air!: The new coly game of the year, where the popularity and longevity of Sutamai meant they could make a move onto the same territory as A3! and Enstars. I give it grief given that I didn’t really play it much, but I did like my time with it. Also has a teacher character, and I’m Hot for Teacher type, so I’d like to give it a little more attention in the new year. Rank 6, featuring Kokuyou Mamoru.

Granblue Fantasy: The mobage king. I have a Mobage account (two even), so the best part about this game is that I’m never losing my data. The English is nice and convenient but I still skip stories, so my representative “favorite,” Holy Saber (female player avatar) Djeeta, is more “This is who I’m leveling right now.” This game feeds the part of the brain that likes numbers going up, in a traditional fantasy setting, and the collab events have me paying more attention to this one than A3! at times. Rank 58, featuring female Holy Saber.

SINoALICE: My other major game this year; it’s been a toss between A3!, GBF, and SINoALICE for which game has held my attention at any given time. If GBF feeds the numbers-go-up part of the brain, SINoALICE does the same in its sadistic fairytale bent. I guess my major gripe, if anything, is that all the jobs are so pretty that I want everything. Rank 106, featuring Invader Three Little Pigs.

THE iDOLM@STER SideM LIVE on ST@GE!: iM@S block! There were times I got really focused on events this year, then the grinding got to me until it came back with a vengeance for the Christmas event. BEST IDOL JIRO summoned, okay. P-Level 33, featuring Yamashita Jiro.

THE iDOLM@STER Million Live Theater Days: The way Mirishita’s home screen is set up, oshi units aren’t really a thing, because the idea is that you’re in the 765 office and you’ll run across the girls. But I love basically all my 765 daughters so picking a favorite is just too hard. That’s a lie. Mizuki. It’s Mizuki. Unlike MSte, the bulk of Mirishita’s event play definitely focuses more on the rhythm game side, so I’ve practically dropped it; but I swear I’m clinging to the daily login ritual just because there’s nowhere else for me to find these babies now. Level 54, featuring Yabuki Kana & Julia.

THE iDOLM@STER Shiny Colors: The new kid on iM@S block started up this past June? Ish? And after we all got freed from the hurdle of overseas players needing VPNs, has kept true to iM@S style with gorgeous character art and “idol production” gameplay. Shanimasu is more like traditional iM@S games than all the phone games, with zero rhythm element - the flip side is this is a game that needs babysitting, and so I just can’t deal with the attention it needs. Featuring Morino Rinze.

Shinen Resist: Or what I unfairly call “Apocalypse A3!” - Shinen Resist is honestly a pretty good game in its own right, with nice graphics, a level-up system, and a battle system that actually feels like your participation is valid. (But if you’re like me, you can still totally auto it if you want to.) Rank 9, featuring Volker.

World End Heroes: And yet another attempt from Squeenix to hit the otome mobage market this past year (after iFan), Wahiro’s biggest contribution to mobage is bringing Ogata Megumi on for a role. It’s got a lot of kinks to work out that it won’t ever because it’s a quick cash grab from Square Enix to see what will stick, but I played one event and hit a higher rank than I did for one event in Shinen Resist, and you can draw your own conclusions. Rank 23, featuring Hisamori Akito.

2018′s been a crazy year for mobage, with a lot of new games starting up; some being postponed (Palette Parade...) and others being revamped (Otome Yuusha); and a number of losses. Cocktail Prince, they still have yet to fill your niche. (And also Wiz;Alice, which ended just two months after it started...? Even though an English version was touted? Damn.)

Unfortunately, I had to quit playing Kyuidime several months back, when the app stopped working for me after an update.

In a last-ditch effort to try and continue playing Anthropomorphized Food Female Battle & Softcore Simulator (okay, I kid about the Softcore... maybe), I deleted the entire app and reinstalled it, hoping the data had been saved to the cloud.

It had not.

Kids, the lesson here is to backup your game data, all the time, every time.

But losing eight-plus 5-stars was too much for my heart and so I sadly gave up on the game. I still follow the Twitter, though, and the game recently updated to put in their own New Year’s event, featuring Soba Noodles, Ozoni Soup, and Amazake - common New Year foods in Japan.

As always, the best part of these designs is finding the food in the characters’ styles - for example, Ozoni has mushrooms and fishcakes in her clothes and even her obi has the bowl and lid the soup is served in. And if we’re really pushing it, her breasts are probably the mochi. (Toshikoshi) Soba’s noodly nature is best established with her straight long brown-gray hair, with the green onion topping best represented by her green dress. And Amazake is just a straight up mess.

In lieu of a New Year’s event, Shinen Resist actually has a collaboration event with Kuroko no Basket going on right now. Two copies each of the Abel and Krone cards at the very top were given as gifts to all players, but Evan, Musashi, Volker, and Joker are all in gacha. I’m not much of a SPORTS!! manga fan, so I know almost nothing about Kuroko no Basket, but I think it’s sweet for the fans who know both that these characters all got sorted into existing schools instead of just being a Shinen/Ensuto High School team.

Wow, time flies.

Another event ends, another gacha banner begins.

I didn’t even touch this last A3! event, my burnout was so severe, so imagine the sudden joy of NEW OMI CARD!!!! rolling up on my Twitter feed.

No related event for this banner, just pure WINTER SPORTS JOY, but that’s something I’m very okay with right now.

Because new Omi card. I gave up on winter sports years ago but I would go to a ski lodge again for him.

Speaking of winter sports, I want a whole series of these now. Including Yuki’s frilly figure skating outfit, Azuu skiing, and Hisoka building a snow marshmallow next to Misumi’s snow ongiri.

“Merry Christmas, Producer. Now watch carefully... what’s this? A pheasant has appeared!”

🎁

“Ah, it was a present, not a pheasant. Here, this is for you. ...that was nerve-wracking.”

Today’s a special day, so I thought I’d at least show you my cool side. ...well, here. I picked it ‘cause I thought it’d look good on you. I hope you like it.

Even when he’s not really smooth, BEST IDOL JIRO is smooth.

Happy Christmas! 🎄

Merry Holiday!

(It’s definitely Christmas somewhere in the world, right?)

If there is any reason I did half as well as I did in LoS!’s Christmas event, of course, it’s because I was lucky enough to score two copies of Christmas Kyoji in event gacha.

It’s probably pretty clear which games are holding my (and tumblr’s) attention when you go through the recent posts on this tumblr, and SINoALICE has very few contenders in that category.

The current X’Mas event includes special gacha jobs for Red Riding Hood and Snow White, but if you splurge on Magic Stones you can also get a Pinocchio. And then you take all those stones and get lots of event medals and you get special X’Mas Nutcracker.