Collectable Card Games are all over the place these days. Whether it be Tabletop, Mobile, PC or Console, this genre has seen some action on multiple platforms and in various formats. These games are fun,
I’ve been playing these for a few weeks now to see which ones I take a liking to and so far I have assembled a little list.
Today we will be looking at the latest card game that I have dabbled with…
Marvel Snap
Amazing artwork, a unique board system, quick games and a risk/reward factor. Marvel Snap has a lot going for it.
At the core of every card game, for me at least, is the cards themselves and these cards are stunning. Being based on the Marvel IP, Mavel Snap can flaunt amazing comic book art of a wide range of characters. What is even cooler is that the game harkens back to the days of collecting trading cards in the sense that if you level up a card, it visually changes. First, the character would ‘break the frame’. Bits of the character will stick out from the card’s border. The next upgrade makes the card 3D, responding to your phone’s Gyroscope (not sure how this works on PC). Then comes the upgrade that animates the card and then the golden frame upgrade. That is as far as I have gotten.
The gameplay has a strong ‘adapt or lose’ mechanic. The player wins by owning at least two of the three zones. To own a zone, you need to have the highest rating in said zone. This is determined by your cards’ power levels. Some cards do different things (Morph, for example, copies a card from your rival’s deck). Some cards have ongoing effects which buff with each turn and other cards have effects that trigger upon being flipped over after a turn. But here is the catch, the zones that you battle for change with each round. Some zones are beneficial, providing buffs to the winner of that zone by a certain turn. Sometimes it is a debuff, removing two points from every card that is placed there. Sometimes effects are doubled etc… so you really need to adapt to the boards as you play. You have six turns to win, but you can retreat as well, and there is a reason for that. At the top of the screen sits a cube. If you tap it (Snap) then the cube doubles. Winner takes all. You use these cubes to gain levels. So if you Snap the cube and your rival doesn’t retreat, the stakes have just gone up. If you lose, you can lose a good handful of cubes from your progress. But retreating is a tactical way of saving some of your cubes. Sometimes it is better to lose one than it is to lose four.
Marvel Snap is available for Mobile and on Steam. The game is a lot of fun with familiar art work and characters. Though I haven’t seen the concept of opening packs to get cards. Instead, you can either buy individual cards either with in game currency or real world money and you get cards from the Pass. While I know there is a premium pass, I haven’t unlocked it. Instead, I have been levelling up in the prologue pass, unlocking new cards and cosmetics. You also unlock cards for levelling up. But I will get a true feel of the monetisation as I progress. So don’t expect this to be my last Marvel Snap article.
Look, the argument of CCG games being pay-to-win is tired now. Of course they are to an extend. I remember when playing the Scooby Doo cards in my school days. The more packs you bought, the more cards you had. Each was a blind pack, too. So as a general rule with CCG games, buy more cards to have more cards to build varied decks. But I am keen to see how this game’s pass works when I get there.
There is no denying that the quick matches (three minutes tops) make for fast paced card dealing action.
It’s quite a marvellous bit of fun!
