okay but really imagine madoka magica go
- you have a soul gem that slowly loses purity as you use magic in fights/as time progresses (you get to choose the color and symbol!)
- to purify your soul gem, you have to win grief seeds by fighting witches or other people using the app
- labyrinths appear on the map the way pokemon in pokemon go do; once you get in range of one, you can enter it and fight the witch
- if your soul gem purity ever reaches 0, your character despairs, and a witch spawns in your location. you then have to make a new character (either starting at the same level as the one that just died, at half the level, or level 0, depending on how big the punishment for letting your character die should be)
- there’s a currency besides grief seeds–maybe “sparkles” or “magica points” or something. you earn this when you fight witches or other magical girls. you can also earn it by fighting familiars or helping people afflicted by witch’s kisses, who appear on the map the way labyrinths do.
- sparkles/magica points/etc. can be used to upgrade your abilities or buy cute magical girl outfit bits for your avatar.
- incubators appear on the map, either as set points like pokestops or randomly appearing the way witches do. you can turn in your used grief seeds in exchange for sparkles/magica points/whatever.
- alternatively, if you collect enough used grief seeds, you can use them to summon a witch in your location.
- magical girls can fight witches together at the cost of splitting the grief seed haul, or they can fight each other in PvP to take each other’s grief seeds
- you can form teams of up to 5 magical girls who have a shared grief seed storage and gain bonuses when fighting together