Marvel Snap is out now for mobile and PC via Steam and is basically a card battle featuring the characters from the Marvel series, both heroes and villains. These characters also come in lots of different art styles, from your classic Marvel comic art to pixel art.
The game itself looks pretty clean and the interface’s aesthetic makes it look like you are a SHIELD Agent accessing through their database.
Gameplay
The game will immediately throw into a match as you start it up for the first time to teach you the basics. The gameplay is pretty simple, you have 3 locations between you and your opponent and whoever gets to capture the most locations by the end of 6 turns wins.
To capture these locations, you’ll need to place down cards on them.
Each card has their own power and needs Energy to play them on the field. You start with 1 Energy and you will gain more energy as the turn passes allowing you to play cards with even higher power.
Some Cards have abilities tied to them that gives you an edge to the game if you played your cards right. For example, I keep abusing the Sentinel card since his ability gives you another copy of him to your hand when you play him.
Locations also have their own abilities tied to them and it will definitely ruin you if you do not pay attention to it. Like the Mirror Dimension that transforms into one of the other locations, and if you are unlucky like me, it will change into a location that swaps the position of the cards.
There’s also the Central Park that adds Squirrels to each location. Squirrels of all animals.
Upgrades
The main selling point of upgrading cards is to get more cards. For each upgrade you make, you will get a collection level and for every increase in level, you will get a new card. The card you upgraded will also receive an upgrade to their visuals.
You need Boosters and Credits to upgrade your cards and you will get those from winning matches and completing your weekly missions. You can even purchase credits from the shop if you like.
Cards
There are two other ways to get cards in this Marvel Snap aside from upgrading the cards you already owned.
The other option is buying them from the shop. Gameplay wise, the paid cards have pretty stacked abilities but it’s not really worth it unless you want to win every single match.
Lastly through their Season Pass. The current Recruit Season has a total of 20 levels and all of them are free. Aside from new cards, the Season Pass also offers Credits and Gold, the premium currency that you use to buy cards.
Completing both Recruit Missions and the Weekly missions will reward you with the experience points to level up the Season Pass.
Some missions will need you to play a few matches or even unlock new cards. More missions will be unlocked as you keep completing them.
Apparently there is a paid Season Pass in Marvel Snap but it’s not something that I could access for now. I hit level 12 for the Season Pass in the time I have played and I still could not see anything past level 20.
Matchmaking
The matchmaking so far has been pretty forgiving, given that the game is new and my account is still fresh. There were a couple of games where I had to fight with players that were using the paid cards but they didn’t stomp me that badly.
The matches are all also going along pretty quick since they set a timer for roughly 30 seconds for each turn.
Current Impression
Marvel Snap is exactly as it sells itself, easy, casual and quick. I am pretty new to the card game genre and I find it quite enjoyable with how quick it is to pick up and play the game.
Progressing in this game feels just nice. It is not too fast nor is it a slog to play through. You win games, you upgrade cards, you unlock cards, switch up your deck if you want and then repeat.
As far as early game goes, I didn’t really have to switch up my decks a lot since the deck you start with is pretty solid.
The monetization in this game isn’t that bad since luckily, there is no gacha to it. The cards are not that too expensive and some of them are art variants, cosmetics of sorts, to the cards you already own.
The game in itself also has some depth to its gameplay. I never experienced it but apparently there is an ability that can remove cards from the field and even move a card to another location. The game has the potential for a lot of combos if you build your deck right and make full use of the locations you need to capture that I am sure hardcore card gamers would enjoy.
If you are a fan of Marvel and would like to have a game that you can play while you idle around, I urge you to play the game as it is a nice way to pass by time. You even get to see awesome artworks of your favourite Marvel heroes.
Discussion about this post