Introduction
Previous page: Walkthrough
Welcome to the second page of the walkthrough! This is the introduction page, where Girlfriend Kari, also known as Girlfriend Beta, will be explained in great detail. This is where you will, hopefully, learn a lot about the game, who it's meant for, and whether or not you'd be interested in playing the game.
So you may be asking, what is Girlfriend Beta and why should I play it? I don't understand any of these moon runes anyways! All of these Japanese characters look the same - they're all blobs of meaningless, confusing, text. Is it really worth my time to do this? Maybe you've seen pictures of these girls and are interested in seeing more of the similar art, or maybe you've seen the anime and want to know more about the series. Maybe you just want to create a ginormous harem surrounded by a bunch of anime girls!
Well, regardless of the reason, as long as you're somewhat curious about the game, you're at the right place.
Game Summary
The Girlfriend Kari Wiki is dedicated to the popular Japanese mobile game, Girlfriend Beta, also known as Girlfriend Kari (ガールフレンド(仮)) created by Ameba. This game is largely a luck-based collection-based card games, where the cards depict art of various anime girls known to give off a somewhat "cute" and "attractive" presence. It's primarily a game for collectors, utilizing various systems like gachapons and luck-based encounter systems.
In short, this is a card game with cute girls. If you've played any other card game out there including ones from the Idolm@ster series, Love Live School Idol Project, or others, the objective will be pretty similar to all those others. You collect cards, and use those cards to get more cards!
Basically, this is a game for COLLECTORS. The main objective is to collect as many cards - each of which depict a certain girl in a certain outfit - as you can from playing through the story and events. Since the cards all have that otaku anime kawaii uguu desu appeal, a bunch of people play the game to collect those cards and get the rarest ones possible. There are over 50 girls (I daresay around 100 total girls) in the game, which makes collecting a very arduous act. The art of each card is drawn in a cute, anime style, which make them attractive for a large audience. Each girl has a collection of cards - meaning that there are a lot of different art pieces for each girl! More cards are introduced at a very rapid rate through events and special promotion, so the game becomes very addicting very fast, especially when you have certain girls that you are particularly fond of (i.e. fond enough to make them your waifu). Do I even have to mention that a large majority of these girls have voice acting? Some of them are even voiced by pretty famous voice actresses, like Tamura Yukari, Yui Ogura, and more!
The rarer the card, the more attractive its art generally is. This causes players to keep coming back for the chance that they will one day obtain that ultra-rare card of their favorite girl. However, the chance of obtaining super rare cards are abysmally low - they're lower than 1%. However, because of this lingering chance, players keep coming back and playing for the chance that the luck and the random number generator will work out in their favor (tl;dr hoping that the RNG gods will bless them).
This is known as Ameba's business strategy, and it works very well. There are over 7 million registered users that play this game. Ameba also holds special promotions, where users can pay money to participate in a lottery to have higher chances to obtain rarer cards. Many people dish out money for this "increased" chance, which gives Ameba profit. Thus, Ameba constantly produces new material to keep players active and returning to the game. After all, who isn't attracted to the beautiful, cute, anime-style art of the cards?
Who doesn't want to form a gigantic harem with over 50 girls?
Note that there are also voice actors for most of the girls, all of them being fairly famous. The art design is also done by QP:flapper, an incredibly gifted artist who has done art and character designs for various Manga and Anime as well (ex: Sora no Method). His style of art fits the game very well, and keeps players coming back to see more cards, meaning art, of their favorite girls!
Do you know why they call it Girlfriend Beta? Because Beta in Japanese can be translated to "tentative," which means that YOU'LL NEVER FIND YOUR TRUE WAIFU IN THIS GAME AND YOU'LL KEEP SWITCHING BECAUSE THERES TOO MANY DAMN GIRLS, SO YOUR RELATIONSHIP WILL FOREVER BE TENTATIVE! You'll be switching back and forth between various self-proclaimed "waifus" and will eventually settle for the harem route. If this doesn't make much sense to you, ignore it.
So, why do people play this? Well, it's obviously because since the beginning of time from when humans first existed, we've always been collectors. We always want to get everything and anything that we possible can to scratch that OCD itch that we have. But that's some scientific junk that doesn't belong in here, but rather over on Wikipedia.
And the other reason for why people play this is because they're sexually frustrated and want to bask in the glory of a two-dimensional anime harem. God, these perverts.
Has this page convinced you to get started with the game? Well, it should at least convince you to give it a try. Setting up the game and getting started with it doesn't take too much time, and everybody loves some good, cute, relaxing art in their day! But if you're still not convinced, maybe you should check this out.
Objective
The objective of this game is to collect as many cards as you can. You can collect cards in various ways. You can get the normal, common, default cards by playing through the story (area or class, whatever you wanna call it). But since everyone can do that the cards are pretty bad (stat-wise and art-wise). Thus, you have to get the good cards somehow else - that comes from doing a gasha roll, attendance checks, pure luck, battling other players, and events.
(What's a gashapon, you ask? It's basically a machine that gives you something random when you press a button. You know, like one of those capsule machine things that you see in stores like WalMart. Like that picture on the right.)
In order to maximize the chance of getting more rare cards, you need to build a strong deck of girls. What does this mean, you ask? Well, every card is good for something other than just being cute! Each card you obtain has stats, which include attack, defense, and cost. The rarer the card, the higher their stats. Thus, having a deck with lots of rare girls allows you to perform better when fighting various enemies or other players. This leads to a correlation with performance in events. Events are generally where most players obtain new cards without having to pay money, although there are definitely still other ways to obtain new cards through just playing regularly. The game will often give out free rolls at the rare gachapon, or give you special tickets that guarantee a certain high-level rarity card! They say good things come to those who wait - this game is the epitome of that statement!
In other words, collect as many cards as you can for a higher chance at getting those super-rare girls.
So, is it worth your time to play this game? Probably not, but you're gonna play it anyways. Because it's addicting, and because it somehow satisfies various areas of your brain when you do so. Your collection urge, OCD urge, cute images urge, relaxation urge, and more. It's also a nice game to play whenever you're bored without too much to do - with great art as well.
So how do you start? By installing the game, of course!
Next up: Installation!
