Craig Snyder · May 30, 2024 · 5 min read Discord’s popularity has boomed over the past several years during its transition from being marketed as a messenger for gamers to a more general communication platform. Discord servers are perfect for websites, internet personalities, and more—they’re one of the easiest ways to build an internet community for a brand, service, or hobby.
With this popularity has come a surge in the development of third-party applications, such as Discord bots. These bots have become more and more creative as Discord grows older, and some have evolved into full-fledged, text/image-based games that people can play entirely through Discord.
For those interested in gaming and anime, there’s good news—many of the most unique Discord game bots cater to these niches. In this article, let’s go over three of the most interesting Discord games for gaming and anime fans that can be played through a bot.
Karuta
Launched in February 2020, Karuta is a new bot that’s quickly gaining popularity. It offers a fun way to collect over 70,000 individual anime characters as cards through Discord.
When added to a server, Karuta works by letting individual players run a command (k!drop) on a timed interval, which rolls a set of cards in a public channel for the player and others to choose from. Beneath these cards will be a set of reactions, numbered up to three, which players can tap or click on.
Whoever is first to react gets the card corresponding to the reaction number, which will then put the player’s claiming ability on a brief cooldown.
Cards will also automatically drop as players in the server chat actively. In large servers, the designated Karuta channel is often very busy due to both the active and passive drop methods.
Karuta is a Discord game with a global economy, meaning cards obtained in one server persist across all others. Cards drop with one of five qualities—damaged, poor, good, excellent, or mint—which visually affects them. There are also print numbers, adding an extra layer of rarity and vanity. Players can spend gold to upgrade cards up to mint condition, which unlocks further progression and cosmetic options, such as dyeing.
Karuta also has a very active trade economy and multiple different currency types to keep things interesting. The bot also takes a very strong stance against cheating, not allowing players to use multiple accounts or bots, and bans players who commit these offenses. Those players’ cards are then sent to a special global auction system where they are distributed back into the economy.
For anime fans and collectors or completionists, Karuta is an incredibly addictive bot.
Pokécord
Pokécord has been around for years and has established itself as one of the truest ways to experience the world of Pokémon through Discord.
To play Pokécord, just add the bot to a server and allow it to monitor channels where users actively chat. As this happens, Pokécord will automatically spawn Pokémon for members of the server to catch. To catch a Pokémon, players need to type the p!catch command followed by the Pokémon’s name.
Pokécord is a blend of casual trivia and a typing speed contest. The most knowledgeable Pokémon fans who can type the fastest will find themselves with the largest collection of Pokémon.
When caught, each Pokémon rolls a level and IVs, or Individual Values, which help determine its overall power level and value (for trading). This makes the bot’s economy much deeper than just catching the Pokémon a player may want—catching one with perfect IVs is the ultimate goal. Each Pokémon’s level passively increases as players chat in Discord servers that feature the bot.
While “catching ‘em all” is the main draw to Pokécord, there is a robust battling system that takes advantage of IVs. While other bots, such as Myuu, may do better of a job than Pokécord at simulating a true Pokémon battle experience, the sheer size of Pokécord—currently over a million Discord game servers—keeps it on top. Pokémon fans will love this bot.
Mudae
Mudae puts an interesting spin on the collection-style game of other bots in this article. Mudae is a Discord bot featuring characters from anime and video games that allows individual servers to run their own local “economy.” Karuta and Pokécord are both global, meaning players’ progress transfers with them across servers, but Mudae puts server owners in control of how the game works.
In Mudae, players are able to roll collectible characters based on several parameters—$hg will roll male characters from video games, $wa will roll female characters from anime, etc. Mudae’s gimmick is collecting “husbandos” and “waifus”, both popular terms in anime culture to describe beloved male and female characters, respectively.
In Mudae, clicking the heart reaction beneath unclaimed rolls will allow players to “marry” these characters, putting them in sole possession of it. Since the game is localized, this means that each character can only be claimed by one person at a time.
Mudae also features a deep currency system, kakera, which allows players to level up badges that augment the way they experience the game. For example, players can use their kakera to forge a Bronze badge that will give them an additional wishlist slot, which will ping them when a character they wish for has been rolled.
Mudae brings together both anime and gaming characters and is especially great in smaller servers due to its finite spawning system.
The Discord games listed above would be a great addition to any server filled with fans of video games or anime, and all three are regularly updated to keep things fresh. Do you have any questions or comments about any of these bots? If so, feel free to leave a comment below.
