Market forces by and large have directed video game design to lean into systems that facilitate a steady drip feed of random rewards long before I was cognizant enough to realize what the hell was going on. The only thing keeping me from burning my time and money on gacha is that their thin veneer of gameplay cannot deceive dopamine receptors long since fried by tens of thousands of hours of Team Fortress 2. A five star SSR roll would need to include the opportunity to kill a man for real for a brain like that to be tricked into thinking looking at spreadsheets constitutes gameplay. Hyper Demon does not have smoking hot anime babes, one of a handful of minor flaws, but the satisfaction of climbing the leaderboard comes close to the exhilaration of one. They even hid a real game behind it.

Like walking into a Chuck E. Cheese, excited for a day of fun. Quickly realizing the games in this Chuck E. Cheese are actually bootleg parody "sad games", but you already paid the Chuck E. Cheese entry fee so you try to get your money's worth. So as you approach the strange games like the Whac-A-Mole that's just holes or the ball pit that's just a pit, a voice over the ceiling speakers goes "but why would Chuck do this". Bewildered, you exit the false Chuck E. Cheese and above the exit in bright curly neons are the words "Don't Be A Sociopath".