The kind of collecting card game has become surprisingly saturated in recent years. Between table staples Magic And Yu-Gi-Oh!Mobile hits Hearth And Runnerraand the Indies love Kill the arrowThere is no shortage of terrace manufacturers to sink your teeth. Even the greatest titles AAA – The Witcher 3 has Splatoon 3– Have their own playing cards mini-games.
Unfortunately, this supersaturation has a cost. After so many iterations of the same formulas, it is easy for these titles (and their rules) to mix. I cannot read so much card text before my eyes start to shine.
So imagine my skepticism when I started Marvel SnapAnd my later surprise when this skepticism melted. Not only does the new Disney Card fighter for iOS and Android have an explosion, it is most likely the most pleasant and least intrusive mobile game I have ever played.
From Hearth In infinity stones
Marvel Snap marks the latest card game Hearth Creator Ben Brode. After Leave team 5 of Blizzard In 2018, Brode founded its own independent studio, second dinner, and concluded a partnership with Marvel Entertainment to develop a mobile game based on MCU.
Brove is not an amateur when it comes to making a convincing CCG. His work on Hearth played a decisive role to become the mastodon that it is today, and one could say that the call of the game has decreased since his departure.
Well, it turns out that his departure was the loss of Blizzard – and Marvel’s gain. In the passage from Azeroth to Avengers, Brode designed a card game that imitates the best of Hearthless all the stuffed animals.
Like his inspiration, Marvel Snap offers a man -based system. Each player builds a game of 12 cards, each with their own level of power and the cost of Mana (aka “energy”). Through six laps, the player and his opponent go from energy to six, in order to play more and more powerful MCU characters.
A game of mobile cards, designed for mobile
And … it is roughly the place where the similarities end. Marvel Snap Is not afraid to overthrow the standard, and it is clear that embroidery learned a lot from his old days of design in Blizzard.
The first, and perhaps the biggest difference between Instant And traditional card games are that players do not have “health” or “life” points. Instead, players are fighting to control three “locations” on the board. Each location contains a maximum of four players’ cards and has a unique effect of modification of the game which has an impact on the game. For example, Crimson Cosmos stipulates that the cards of 1, 2 and 3 costs cannot be played there – only higher energy characters can argue. By adding the power of your cards to a given location, you will see the total power you are currently using to control this location.
This feeds the second big reshuffle with Marvel Snap (The one to whom I have already alluded): the matches are capped at only six laps. Each round, the players simultaneously slide their cards in front of their planned location. The game then reveals the cards and solves the effects of the card. After the Tour de Tour, the game counts the points for each location. Hold the most power in two or more locations and you win the game.
It is an intelligent touch on the established formula, which plays in mobile format in an ingenious manner. Each match only works three to five minutes, perfect for a short trip or a lunch break. The size of the smaller deck of the game reduces the complexity of the experience (no spells or secrets to worry here), but there is still a lot of strategy for those who want to optimize their deck and dominate their opponents.
Oh, snap!
Progress in Marvel Snap In a breeze, thanks to a multitude of different reward systems. All the bells and whistles you could expect from a digital card game are there, including daily and weekly quests, seasonal challenges and a classified scale. However, it is the latter in particular that deserves a special mention.
Each victory against an opponent gives you a cosmic cube; Lose against an opponent and you lose a cube. The more cubes you, the more you reach the upper scale levels. It is a simple concept, however Instant Quickly turns this on his head.
If, at any time in the middle of the match, you feel confident to be able to beat your opponent, you can “break”. (This is done by pressing a Cosmic Cube icon at the top of the screen.) This doubles the issues of this game, from a cosmic cube to two. Likewise, if your opponent feels the same thing, he can also double, increasing the issues to four.
Here is where it becomes interesting: once the players enter the final round of the game, the issues double Again. If four cubes were at stake (that is to say, the two players broke), the bet is doubled at eight. Once the players have made their last movement of the match, they lock themselves in this bet. However, if a player doesn’t Think they can win, they can choose to “escape” (that is to say to concede) and avoid paying the biggest bet of the bet. (In this case, they would only lose four cubes.)
He is an ingenious mechanic – the one who adds spices at risk reward to an already well -seasoned experience. Not only does this give players in a russe (or arrogant) way the ability to rank faster, but that removes the sting of conceding by making an integral part of your strategy.
Addressing the whale in the room
If you play a mobile game in 2022, there is a good chance that the game will have microtransactions. This is not what many players might want, but it is the reality in which we live.
Marvel Snap Do not break with the standard with its payment structure, but the game deserves the merit of having made its MTX as pleasant as possible. The zero cards in the game are locked behind a paying wall; You can unlock all the MCU characters (150+ at launch) simply by playing the game. The closed content of the game consists of cosmetics (illustrations of variant cards, back of cards, etc.), which you can buy via a currency in the game or real money.
In other words, Instant lives much closer to tastes Fortnite And League of legends that Impact of GENSHIN And Fire Emblem: Heroes. There is probably a version if you want to unlock the rarities of the smallest cards, but even the lower and more accessible rarities manage to be incredible.
A warning: while Marvel Snap Fortunately, avoids the card packs (undoubtedly the most predatory form of MTX in games like Hearth), its most invasive characteristic is in the form of a seasonal battle pass. During the launch, there is a season on the theme of Morals of 50 miles nicknamed “Symbiote Invasion”, which takes place from October 18 to November 6. At $ 9.99, the price complies with the most modern free games.
Although the battle pass itself is relatively harmless (it provides limited-term variants, as well as early access to cards like Miles Morales), the three-week execution time worried me somewhat. It does not seem long enough for users to play at their own pace. Given the otherwise creaky experience, I am ready to give it a chance, but as for most F2P games, the verdict has always been released.
Final reflections
It shouldn’t surprise me Marvel Snap is such an explosion. The game has intelligent mechanisms, amazing card arts and crystalline controls. It doesn’t hurt that Instant Presents some of the most emblematic heroes and villains to adorn a comic strip or a cinema screen.
And yet I am surprised. I am surprised to see how love has entered this game – card flavor like Quicksilver, which is guaranteed to appear in your starting hand; cards animation like Iron Man, which uses its propellants to enter the game board; Using the gyroscope to reveal the cards as if they were three -dimensional. Beyond all this, I am surprised that a mobile game can be as good, without looking for the wallet.
I have concerns about the Battle pass, but they can wait another day. Marvel Snap is released now, and the reality is that it is stellar. Play it on iOS or Android, or try an early access version for PC via Steam (the large screen support is coming soon). Thanos could be bad, but this shot is damn good.
Score: 9.3 / 10
