In Gacha Life, you can create and customize your own chibi characters, which you can set them up for a scene in the Studio mode, or take the role of one of them and interact with and befriend the NPCs in the Life mode. As for the "Gacha" part, you can spend Gacha gems on Gachas and earn gifts from them and gift them to the NPCs.
In other words, it's just a fun cutesy game with little meaning other than creating chibi characters and having fun with them.
You can download the PC version here, as well as the mobile version with extra features (such as online chat and roleplay) from App Store and Google Play.
A sequel known as Gacha Club was released on June 29, 2020, with more customization options and a Role-Playing Game mode replacing the friendship sim mode.
Gacha Life provides examples of:
- Ad Reward: Players can watch ads in order to earn a random number of gems, which are used in the gacha portion to earn gifts to give other characters.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: You can color your character's skin red, blue, whatever!
- Animesque: The game's artstyle definitely falls under this, complete with notable Japanese Visual Arts Tropes (Anime Hair, Big Anime Eyes, etc.).
- Beast Man: Picc and Pawket, two raccoon girls who form a music duo called "Bandits".
- Big Head Mode: By accessing Meme Mode by clicking the button with three dots four times, you can change your character's head size, including to big.
- Cat Girl:
- Rambo Nyan Kitty, a Cloud Cuckoolander one who loves using cat puns.
- Moe and her glitched counterpart m o. Moe quizzes you on how soft her ears are and how fast she can wag her tail while m o speaks in a corrupted format l i k e d i s¿
- Dating Sim: Life mode is essentially a platonic version of this. You can talk with, ask, gift, and answer Pop Quizzes from the NPCs (the preset characters) and increase your friendships with them.
- Digital Avatar: Your character can serve as this for you.
- Fingerless Hands: Every character only has a thumb for each of their hands, making them look like mittens.
- His Name Really Is "Barkeep": The principal of the school in Life Mode is Mr. Principal.
- Little Bit Beastly: Some hair options have cat/pointed canine/bunny/bear ears, and you can add tails to your character.
- Pop Quiz: When you reach the Friendship Level of 5, the NPC can give you a short 10-question quiz over the information you've asked them for. Huge rewards await for those who ace.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Not necessarily public domain, but the game uses royalty-free music provided by DOVE-SYNDROME.
- Scunthorpe Problem: Infamously, every word with the letter sequence a-s-s is censored, resulting in things like "cl***ic", "br***", etc.
- Super-Deformed: The main art style, along with Animesque.
- Surfer Dude: Brody, a surfer who likes sports, fishing, and music.
- Tamer and Chaster: Previous Gacha games would include fully humanoid anime characters, some serving Fanservice. Gacha Life focuses on chibi characters and more on the cute than sexy.
- Temporal Theme Naming: There are 4 NPCs named after the 4 seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.
- Trademark Favorite Food: You can set your character's favorite food.
- Bex's favorite food is chicken nuggets, and her minigame has you try to catch all the nuggets without any touching the ground.
- Unusual Ears: Since all models have human ears, putting on hair with Little Bit Beastly ears creates Fridge Logic.
- Video Game Perversity Potential: Inevitable for a character design/roleplay game. It was possible to dress up your character in skimpy clothing (and even color their clothes the color of their skin!) and pose them to resemble sexual acts, as well as let them say any phrase at your will. This got so out of hand that Lunime released a patch to remove all of this potential.
- Virtual Paper Doll: The entire point of the game. You can create a character and refine their body, hair, facial features, clothing, and profile, coming up with endless combinations. The fandom regularly circulates character and outfit ideas.
- Water Is Womanly: Lado is a girly, blue haired Cat Girl whose element is water.