This year’s 2022 Game Awards Mobile Game of the Year, Marvel Snap, is a fairly simple trading card game that anyone can get into. It’s available for free on Android, iOS and PC via Steam (but not Epic, sadly).
I enjoy how convenient this game really is. First off matches usually last 3-5 minutes. I also enjoy the quality of life features such as the framerate toggle. There are beginner friendly features like every card has its effects, play cost and attack power labeled on the card. A big plus is that this game has 0 of the 0 ad.
Second Dinner —the studio that made Marvel Snap—created a unique system of play that allows both players to take their turns simultaneously. You then have around 60 seconds to pick what cards to play and where to play them.
There are three randomly-selected locations where you can play cards. Each location is concealed until all three are shown. One location is revealed per turn for the first 3 turns.
Players have two paths to victory. The first is to have two locations where the combined attack power of the cards you place there are higher than your opponent’s. The other is to battle to a draw at two locations and have a higher amount of attack points at the remaining location. The player with the most combined points at the end of six rounds wins the match.
Something I can gladly say about Marvel Snap is that it’s the only trading card game I know of that I would recommend to casual gamers. In addition to the simplicity of play, this game has an extremely low barrier to entry both in terms of minimum knowledge required (that being none) and equipment (being that it’s widely available).
Another upside is the fact that if you decide to play this game on multiple devices there are both cross-play and cross progression. This not only makes it harder for the game to completely die (with more ways for players to play), it also means that your progress isn’t locked to a single device—which is literally always a good thing.
The main thing I enjoy about Marvel Snap is how quick the matches go. Each game takes about five minutes to complete — although players have the option to retreat (thus forfeiting all earnings and handing an automatic victory to the other player). A match can also end early if both players run out of cards or space to play cards.
As of the time of this review the online in this game is fantastic—I haven’t experienced any lag or elongated wait times looking for a match. Keep in mind that while I’m writing this, the game is only two months old but the online is looking 100x healthier than Nick All Stars a week after release.
In terms of progression I haven’t unlocked every card yet, but I have gotten a fair amount throughout my time playing For October 2022 to January 2023, but I haven’t personally experienced or seen any cards that were overpowered or broken, but that could change with time (hopefully it doesn’t though).
The number one thing I would like to applaud this game for is the fact that all the cards, in-game progression and even the Battle Pass are 100 percent free. I mean, obviously there’s an in-game store BUT there’s no pay-to-win aspects of this game which helps keep the online environment healthy and enjoyable for both new and highly-experienced players. Recently a token system was added to help “target specific cards” but to quote King Future, “whatever that fuckin means”.
Now I sure do like to praise this game and all of its big fat wet W’s but I have two very strong gripes with this game.
One thing I’m sad to mention is that this game has no social features at all whatsoever. There are no factions or clans to add anything interesting to the game that creates healthy competition within it’s community.
There’s also no way to create private lobbies to have any sort of one-on-one matches. If you just want to play with your friends… oh well I guess. Go cry in a corner to pass the time or something IDK.
In terms of things to do in this game there really isn’t much besides ranked mode. Just to be clear wehen I say there isn’t much else there literally isn’t anything else. Everything there is to do is displayed on the home screen wehen you login to the game.
It would be cool if an update added a few different modes of play to spice up the game for wehenever one (eventually) gets tired of ranked. Maybe they could do something where each person picks one location & the third location is random. There are a lot of additions that the community would appreciate like an unranked casual mode or a special rules mode.
To conclude, Marvel Snap is a pretty solid game with a low barrier of entry that I would genuinely recommend you at least play through the tutorial to see if you like it or not and give it a chance.
