Marvel Snap (2022)

The level of unreasonable anxiety while playing TCGs is an utter mystery to me.

Even while enjoying a brief patch of dominance vs the bottom tier of players learning the game, I am still ruptured with tension. Am I having fun? It feels like I'm visiting a friends house with their angry dad in the garage.

It must be the unknowable human on the other side of the table - logician knives out. That, or the glaring slot machine assault on the senses. Marvel Snaps entire user experience is crafted to keep chasing a serotonin drip. Bedazzling sound and lights at a fervently engaged design, aimed to produce a frothed mouth, molar grinding overdose into the Store page.

My intent is to quell the real life desire to crack packs and pull foils, but I'm left feeling rattled.

Still, its better than my box of unplayed Magic Cards. They don't have the hulk.

I've never really played collectible cards games. I did read the Magic The Gathering comicbooks, does that count? I also dabbled with the Vs. system fifteen years ago or something, but that was it. No Magic, no Hearthstone, no Gwent, nothing. Then everybody was talking about Marvel Snap, I saw how developers talked about it and I got curious. Plus, I almost don't read them anymore but I have a lot of knowledge and affection for Marvel comicbooks and I like not having to actually buy the cards. So I donwloaded it and, well, it's how I imagine being crack addicted is. I played it more than any other game in I don't know how much time. I went back to constantly playing a multiplayer game like back in the day of sports games on the first two Xbox consoles. Anytime I have a few minutes to waste, I squeeze a game in. After a more "casual" beginning, I started curating many different decks and I use all of them. I went so all-in that I decided to create a set of rules to limit daily playtime. After three months I noticed I am playing a bit less but the reduced playtime is not comparable to what usually happens with other mobile games. So yeah, I love it and I think I will play it a lot for at least a few more months, even though I can see myself giving it up in the future.

Now, I understand these can be troubling games because of the monetisation system, but I'm having a lot of fun without paying a single dime (and I gotta say I would have been fine if paying a fee was mandatory, considering how many hours I spent on it). But sure, people who tend to go on spending sprees should be very careful.

A fun and snappy (eh?) collectible card game. There's just enough randomness built in that most matches feel engaging even when you play the same deck a few times in a row. But not so random that deck strategy and tactics feel like they don't matter. Matches take 3 minutes at most, perfect for mobile. And there is lots of MCU style and fun animations (and strangely satisfying haptics) that makes the app feel great to use.

Besides the growing (but expected) monetization issues for this mobile game, the main drawback is the incredible grind of this game. Instead of booster packs you have to play many matches just to earn what you need to feed the gachapon mechanic where you might unlock a single card. Cards, in this collectible card game, are weirdly scarce.

You can play and have fun without spending a penny. So if you like Marvel and/or the MCU as well as more casual TCGS, this is worth a download.

I played A LOT of Hearthstone in my school days, too much really, even if I eventually got tired of it and haven't played it in several years. So I can't say I was all that interested when I heard about this game given I haven't felt that itch and I'm not all that into Marvel. But alas, a couple friends got super into it and I figured I'd give it a try so I could follow at least some of those conversations.

I think the game does a pretty good job at what it's trying to do. The good thing about heavy-RNG games is that randomness can be fun and exciting and it makes the iteration of playing games more varied even when playing the same deck. This tends to come at the obvious cost of predictability that more skill-reliant games require. But neither side of that continuum is a bad thing, there's simply a trade-off. The randomness definitely helps to make the game more casual and easy to grind out games without feeling bored or like you've seen it all. Getting screwed by RNG can be irritating, but it also takes some of the sting out of losing. Though there's certainly skill and strategy to the game as well. Your decks are also very small, just 12 cards, making deck-building quick and quite simple. Additionally, the game is tailored to super short iterations with matches you can finish during a 5-minute wait in line or a waiting room. These factors combine to make a fairly capable casual experience and that's probably the best thing about it. If you're into Marvel, there are cards for a wealth of the too-many characters in those universes (or multiverses, whatever) so you can play your favorites assuming you happen to pull them.

My biggest issue with SNAP is that I just don't find the game all that engaging. As I said, I'm not really a big fan of the underlying IP and while I wasn't really much of a Warcraft fan either, the fantasy setting, classes, and comedic charm still appealed to me a lot more with Hearthstone. The gameplay is okay and I appreciate the ability to play several games in very little time, but I don't find the super simplistic and RNG-heavy gameplay all that fun these days. This is primarily because I think I'm just kinda played out on this kind of thing from those Hearthstone days and it has little to do with the game itself. That makes it kind of hard to review this since it's not even "taste" so much as I'm just over this style of game.

The only major separate and specific criteria I'd judge it negatively on is that while the gameplay and rules are quite simple, there are a lot of cards in the game already and I find that really overwhelming. The way you earn them is also really weird and based on how much you play and a bit how much you pay. The unlock method mitigates the risk of being totally pay-to-win by basing your ladder opponents roughly on your collection level more than your rank. So if you spend a bunch of money to unlock cards, you won't really have much advantage since your opponent should have roughly an equal collection. In some ways you're at a disadvantage to people who earned more by just playing given they'll have a leg up in experience. So you're more paying for options, though there's definitely plenty of opportunity for microtransactions, unsurprisingly for a f2p game. But anyway, I consider this a bad thing because, while having a ton of cards is a good thing in a lot of ways, I do find it really overwhelming since the vast majority have an ability of some kind so there's a lot out there to keep track of for such a young game. When my friends link screenshots of a close game they just finished or a super wonky play, I basically understand it about as much as I would if I'd never played the game given I don't know what almost any of the cards in play do. Again, the collection level matchmaking mitigates this from being a significant gameplay issue so I probably shouldn't care, but it does still bug me feeling so weirdly overwhelmed by "what's out there."

Something I'm not really sure how to rate but feel I should note is that the ladder weirdly includes bots. The game is mildly deceptive about this as there's no clear indication they're bots unless you know some criteria to look for that give them away. This has one benefit in that there are very minimal queue times and, in my experience, you get a match very quickly, which is all the more important for a game you may pull out to play just one game during a 5 minute break. But it is at least odd that the game is kind of deceptive about this, despite it being a well-known fact in the community. Further, it just takes away from the game some to know that sometimes you're playing an ai.

Overall, I think if you're into Marvel and/or a casual card game like this sounds interesting to you, this is probably worth a try and I might recommend it on that basis (unless you're prone to spend a ton of money on this sort of game, then STAY AWAY). It does a pretty good job at the things it's aiming to do and I don't really have a ton of criticisms in that regard. I think for a lot of people it's going to be a blast and an easy 5 stars. For me though, I think it's barely 3 stars at best and I don't see myself playing it much more.

After a week of playing with Agatha, experimenting with different decks and having a lot of fun, I decided to write a guide in spanish for this card.

This card is actually not fun to play... it takes control of your card and plays at random, but creating a deck that takes advantage of that was really engaging and rewarding.

Marvel snap stunts player creativity, insults it's players intelligence, and use manipulative psychology to pressure people into spending money.

The "it has no lootboxes so it must be good" is a complete fabrication. Overall, Marvel Snap is yet another exploitative mobile game: built on the meticulous cultivation of suspension of disbelief.

There are two elements of the monetization that are bad:

One

First, the structure of the game forces you into a ranked que. The game rewards you for wining games in the ranked que.

Now that you are playing ranked all the time, your rewards will be based on your ability to win. There is no other que. As the game is so simple, you are seriously limited by how powerful your deck is. This means that once you plateau at a certain rank, you will start to lose.

So, You need to gain better cards to climb further and get more rewards quicker. Thus, you are motivated towards a "collection level," it will take a person months and months of daily play to unlock the best cards as a free-to-play player.

There are overlapping currencies that hide the use of money to progress collection level. I'm fairly certain in a decade or so this type of monetization will be illegal.

The fact that you can't see the next card in the collection level also means that the game is effectively using a lootbox mechanic.

Two

The cost of the cosmetics are unnecessarily high - they make the battlepass seem like it has value - which is also priced very high. A single variant has the same cost as an indie game, a meal out or 3 packs of Pokémon cards.

I very rarely give 1 star reviews.

I'm taking the third star away because the game started me off against bots without telling me. Really poor form. I'm taking the Second away from a monetization model that is built on abusing the very thing I love about gaming, letting me get lost in a world so I can forget about the real world for a time.

Overall, a fun game on a fundamental level, marred by aggressive psychological manipulation - manipulation that is hiding behind the façade of a good ethics.

There's a lot to like about this game, and when I've logged in to play I've generally enjoyed it.

• The music is catchy;
• Gameplay is QUICK--a match lasts 6 turns (usually), and only takes a couple to a few minutes. Very nice if you don't have a lot of time to bear down and concentrate on a game;
• SO MANY different cards, characters, and settings! There's pretty much never a match that will play out the same way as a previous one;
• The artwork is wonderful, and you can get a lot of variants--some even for free.

With all that said, there's also plenty to give you pause about playing this game.

• You are mostly at the mercy of RNG when it comes to getting specific cards, unless you're willing to pay out real money for specific cards during an event (or a ridiculous amount of the in-game premium currency). I NEVER got a Spider-Man card, and I'm a little salty about that.
• There's a definite meta to the game, and after a certain point, if you don't have the meta deck or enough of the individual meta characters, you're going to lose. A lot. To the point where it'll impede your progress substantially.
• The p2w aspect isn't as bad as in a lot of these kinds of games, but it was still there.
• You could get the character cards you wanted, but you'd be playing for a long time after a promotional event to make it happen.

I'm in the middle of a purge of f2p/p2w mobile games, so I'm getting rid of Marvel SNAP. But I did enjoy it on the occasions that I logged in to play, even if it wasn't able to rope me in as completely as some of the other mobile games I'll be deleting.

(This is a mini-review as part of my holiday project to try out as many games on my wishlist during the Steam Sales, and then getting them refunded if I don't think I will play them. In short: demo time!)

What is it: Mobile-first hearthstone light.

Played: 34 minutes

Evaluation: Man, this is like juicy, crunchy phone game candy! It feels a bit light on meaningful decisions. In many card games, you are mostly just playing the logical option for a few turns until you get to a meaningful decision point where picking the best option is actually hard. That doesn't happen a lot in the starting games, but I guess it would get better as you level up? Whenever you finish a game, you get like four rewards that all go "Ka-ching!". I can't see how it would get very addictive.

Is it a keeper? Yes (but on pc, not on phone)

So much has changed since my last update. Like probably most of the people playing the game, I felt so confident in pool one, winning almost every match, climbing the ladder. Then I hit pool two and completely ate ass for days. I'm up to collection level 487 now and pulled my first pool three card. My infinite rank is now 62. I have a good control deck that is doing very well for me, and I feel confident, but that will fade so quickly once I started losing to pool three decks.

Still the most fun I am having with video games right now. This game is more than I could have hoped for.

This one got its hooks in me, but it's slowing down a bit now that the high speed progression ramp is over.

Pros:

• The variety of both cards AND locations is incredible. I'm collection rank 200 and just now had my first game with the "Ego" location
• Game is quick, easy to play in chunks
• No P2P junk yet

Cons

• Progression loses rewarding feel once you get going
• Turns out I'm not that into building decks, so it feels like a tax to me to construct decks
• Like any game, people google the meta and just try to play that way. The variety of locations does help combat this though