Testing Marvel Snap: Why it”s the smartest game of the year for Thomas
Over eight million downloads in first month, 86 percent positive Steam reviews: Thomas dove into Marvel Snap to find out what”s behind the new trading card hype
I get up at the same time every day (yes, even on weekends), I eat the same cereal for breakfast every day, I go to the same pub every fortnight, and I play a few games of Hearthstone on the way to work every day. For pedants like me, few things make me happier than routines.
Blizzard”s collectible card game has had me hooked for eight years now. So when I suddenly try another trading card game on the underground, it”s like a medium-sized miracle. Only medium-sized, because the Marvel Snap was created by the same game designer as Hearthstone, namely Ben Brode.
That made me just as curious as the fact that this Marvel Snap has not only been insanely successful since release, but has also been very well received even in my rather Free2Play-critical Filter Bubble.
Actually, I just wanted to take a quick look. Actually. A quick look turned into ten games a day, Marvel Snap has me hooked without mercy. Because this game is just unbelievably clever!
Table of Contents
Smartness 1: Maximum fun in minimum playing time
Marvel Snap trims its gameplay for Kurzweil with unparalleled consistency. My deck consists of just twelve cards with different combat values, which I distribute in six rounds simultaneously with my opponent and face-down to three locations.
Only after the six rounds are over are the respective combat values per location added up; whoever dominates two of the three locations also wins the game. Only in the case of a tie does the total value of the cards decide, but this has only happened twice in my well over a hundred matches to date.
Far more often I have won games with weaker card values because I distributed them more cleverly among the locations than my opponent.
Because there are only six rounds including a time limit, the games only last three to a maximum of five minutes. But in those three minutes, the punk goes off! Something cool, annoying and/or exciting happens in almost every turn, even games long thought lost can still turn around with the last card played.
The eponymous “snap” brings even more drama to the trading card game: If I am sure of victory, I activate it and thus double the ranking points I can win or lose.
If my opponent also snaps, this even means a quadrupling. Of course, every snap can just as well be a desperate bluff to encourage an early retreat.
You”ll understand the principle of Marvel Snap after five minutes, but you”ll still be learning and experiencing new things even after hundreds of games.
Smartness 2: Avoiding the Trading Card Traps
The special thing about Marvel Snap: It juggles so cleverly with random elements that on the one hand the genre-typical routine never gets a chance, but on the other hand I almost (!) always have the feeling that the better tactics decide and not luck.
The most important random element are the three locations that are gradually revealed in the first three moves. There are already more than 50 of these, and they have a decisive influence on the games. Sometimes they increase or reduce the card values according to certain rules, sometimes they change the decks, sometimes they destroy entire cards or locations.
Unlike in Hearthstone, I can therefore rarely follow my deck strategy from A to Z, but have to adapt it flexibly and cleverly to the respective setting conditions.
Marvel Snap also masterfully balances the fine line between random tension and tactical influence when it comes to the actual drawing of cards. Because with only six rounds and twelve cards in the deck, I know that I can usually play nine of them (I already have three in my hand at the start of the game).
But of course, the order of drawing plays an important role in the success of my strategy, which in turn can be manipulated by both the venues and some card abilities.
But all these elements add up to a great collectible card game whole, as exciting as it is clever, because they reward anticipating your opponent”s strategy. Whereas in Hearthstone I just do my thing 90 percent of the time, in Marvel Snap I”m mostly thinking about what my opponent is up to and how I can best counter it.
As a result, almost every game tells its own story. What Marvel Snap fires off in just three minutes in terms of tension, surprise, drama, anger and jubilation is something I”ve really never experienced before in such concentrated form.
Smart 3: A collectible card game without Pay2Win
A trading card game actually automatically means Pay2Win by definition. Because the more cards I buy, the more options I get to put together a powerful deck.
And this is already where Marvel Snap sends the first “Think again!” to sceptics like me. With one exception, it simply won”t let me buy any cards. The exception concerns the Season Pass, whose paid version also contains a handful of cards. However, according to my impressions of the game, these cards are not overpowered, and they can also be unlocked without spending money after the Season Pass expires.
In general, Marvel Snap completely avoids the use of card packages, i.e. loot boxes, which is untypical of the genre. Instead, you automatically unlock new cards by upgrading the ones you already have, which requires the game currency Credits. This not only gives the cards a fancier frame or a 3D effect, but also increases your collection level, which earns you in-game currency or new cards with each level.
Marvel Snap”s two balancing tricks: 1. it divides its 200+ cards into three pools and only lets players from the same pool compete against each other, which ensures equality of opportunity. 2. it distributes the order in which the cards are unlocked differently for each player. This means that you will know all the cards in your pool after about two dozen games at the latest, but you will always encounter new deck constructions.
This principle makes deck building less predictable than in other trading card games, especially since unlike in Hearthstone you cannot craft cards. But as long as the result feels as fair and balanced as it did in my test games, I”m happy to accept this limitation.
Of course, Marvel Snap still wants your money. In addition to the Premium Season Pass, you can buy gold, which in turn can be exchanged for credits, which you need for upgrades and map unlocks. In the end, you buy more speed in the expansion of your map pool.
But because you”re just as likely to amass a competitive card selection in a short time through regular play, and even payers have no influence on the order in which cards are unlocked, Marvel Snap feels a lot fairer than its prominent trading card competition.
Why such a clever game doesn”t get a higher rating
So for me, Marvel Snap already does some crucial things better than my perennial favourite Hearthstone and yet gets a lower rating – how does that fit together? This is due to three elementary weaknesses where Blizzard”s trading card game simply plays in a different card league:
1. The small scope: Of course, Marvel Snap is fighting with far fewer resources than Hearthstone, which has been regularly adding new content for eight years now. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Marvel Snap still has nothing to offer apart from the central PvP mode. And since this is consistently trimmed to be entertaining, it makes for a mega mood for a quarter of an hour, but after ten games at the latest and all the daily bonuses taken along, Marvel Snap noticeably runs out of steam.
2. The brittle presentation: Marvel Snap is great to read and probably even runs on your toaster, but otherwise makes disappointingly little out of the strong licence and the possibilities of a digital card game. Animations are as scarce as special effects, which is why your Marvel heroes rarely feel like real heroes, but mostly just like … well … cards.
3. The miserable PC port: You can tell from the first second of play that Marvel Snap was developed with only one platform in mind: your phone. On the smartphone, the card battling flows wonderfully and, in contrast to Hearthstone, can even be operated with just one hand.
On the PC, on the other hand, the official Steam version hardly looks more professional than a run-of-the-mill Android emulator. The playing field remains upright and the resolution is simply scaled up, which gives you the feeling that you are only playing a mobile game on your gaming PC.
However, these three criticisms don”t change the fact that Marvel Snap has actually achieved the impossible with its incredibly clever game design: I get up at the same time every day, I eat the same cereal for breakfast every day, I go to the same pub every fortnight, and I play a few games of Marvel Snap every day on my way to work.
Editorial Conclusion
As much as I enjoyed playing Hearthstone every day for eight years, I”m aware that I”m actually just reeling off a routine. Because after three to four moves at the latest, both I and my opponent know what we each have in mind. The rest of the game consists of hoping for draw luck and playing down the eternally same card combination.
Marvel Snap breaks me out of this routine with impressive consistency, because it really turns playing side by side into playing against each other. The better I anticipate what my opponent is up to, the more efficient my cards and deck strategies become. And that”s why the victories taste a lot sweeter to me here than in Hearthstone.
The rules, motivational spiral and Free2Play fairness are really cleverly thought out down to the last detail. Almost every game tells its own story, and upgrading and collecting the well-known Marvel heroes has been motivating me to log in every day for weeks now, without me feeling bullied into it.
However, I have to admit that I play Marvel Snap mainly on mobile, which is obviously what it”s designed for. On the PC, the fast-paced card battling works just as well, but the brittle staging is much more noticeable than on a small mobile screen.
But if you”re looking for a new mobile pastime, you”ll hardly find anything more entertaining than Marvel Snap.
