[Mobile Games] Marvel Snap Review - MCCGU

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Marvel Snap is an elegantly simple and inventive approach to digital CCGs that emphasizes adaptation and creativity.The advent of digital collectible card games has led to an explosion of different approaches to the genre. Mostly, though, new games have adapted the fundamentals of physical CCGs. With Marvel Snap, Hearthstone veteran studio Second Dinner has reduced the collectible card game to its most essential pieces and reimagined them, creating a combination of systems that are elegantly simple without ever feeling simplistic.

 

Like many other modern card games, Marvel Snap automates its equivalent of mana or energy, adding one unit per turn. But then it streamlines the genre even further: Each game lasts only six turns, and there is no direct combat between characters or choosing whether to deal damage to enemy scrubs or "go face" for direct player damage. Instead, your goal is to accumulate the most power across three locations. At the end of six turns, whoever controls two of the three locations wins the match, and ties are determined by total power across all three.

small that it's easy to tinker with a deck, swapping out one less-used card for your latest find, sample it for a couple of lightning-quick games, and then tinker some more.

A similarly refined approach has been applied to its progression mechanics. The explosion of digital CCGs has by-and-large used the collection approach po[CENSORED]rized by Magic, Pokemon, and similar physical card games years prior. You pay money for a random pack of cards and then use that to construct your deck. Marvel Snap breaks out of this paradigm in favor of a different form of CCG progression that is truly only available in a digital context. Instead of cracking open randomized packs of cards, you build your collection by visually upgrading your existing ones. You earn upgrade materials through play and then use those to upgrade cards with several tiers of visual effects: breaking out of the frame, a nifty 3D effect, an animated background, and so on. Upgrading those cards earns you "Collection Rank," which progresses you along a path that earns you more upgrade materials and, most importantly, new cards. Then you can begin upgrading those new ones, and the process starts over again.

It's a fiendishly compelling system that feeds into itself, and one that could easily have become predatory. So far, that isn't the case. While anything is possible with a live game that will continue to add content for the foreseeable future, right now you can't simply spend your way into all the best cards. Even if you had infinite money to spend, you can only purchase a handful of upgrade shortcuts per day, making it a fairly inefficient way to level up. The monetization strategy instead seems aimed mostly at purchasing variant art, like pixelated or baby versions of the characters. There's so many of these it seems impossible to gauge how long it could take to collect them all, but it's also a purely visual flourish.

The other monetization comes in the form of a season pass, which awards new cards, credits, and other bonuses for completing missions. In my experience so far, this is also surprisingly generous and low-impact. I was concerned that by coming in midway through the season I may not be able to finish the season pass in time and miss out on the best rewards. After only a few days I was already caught up and able to start pocketing the new missions as they progressively unlocked. Daily missions unlock on a regular timer every eight hours, and take just a few minutes to complete, and largely grant progress toward your season pass missions. This is a game that wants you to check in frequently for a little bit of time, not obsess over for hours at a time.

Though to be honest, it's too late for that--I've already lost hours to Marvel Snap and I am obsessed. The game is fine-tuned, well-designed, and so easily digestible that it’s difficult to put down. I keep finding myself continuing to play even after having completed my daily or season pass missions, just because I want to play another match, or try a new card. Second Dinner has built an incredible foundation here, and I expect Marvel Snap will continue drawing me in for years to come.

 

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/marvel-snap-review-mccgu/1900-6417991/