Marvel Snap

Marvel Snap is one of those games featuring many of your favorite Marvel characters. It is a 1v1 game. It involves you putting characters in 3 different locations. There's 6 turns and you get a set amount of energy points each turn. The energy points allow you to put down the characters (each character could afford more than others). Each character has their own ability when they are played, like lowering the opponents cards (characters) at that location. Each location has its own thing as well, like who has the most cards there gets extra power. Whoever has the most power points there wins the location. Win 2 or 3 of the locations, you win. I don't know every character who's in it. I'm figuring it all out while I'm unlocking them.

"Marvel Snap" is a mobile game, produced by Second Dinner, of "Hearthstone" fame, which was released in 2022. I saw the game receive a positive review in the Guardian's game section and decided to give it a try.

The game is a virtual card game. The game consists usually of six rounds, in which players place cards, depicting Marvel characters, onto three bases, at the end of the sixth round, each players power is totalled and the bases are won or lost - whomever has the most bases is the games winner. The character cards each have a power score, but most have some sort of alternate effect that placing them activates. For example, if you place Squirrel Girl on one base, a squirrel of equal score will appear on both of the other bases. The bases are themed after Marvel locations, and may also have varying effects on the cards, for example Banner's Lab will explode at the end of the fourth round and transform every card laid there to The Hulk.

As with all of these sorts of games, success within the matches causes the generation of a couple of forms of in game currency. With those you can upgrade the cards you own, purchase variant cards, or buy new ones. There are also daily and weekly tasks to be accomplished within the games, such as winning a base with a single card that also unlocks more virtual currency. You can circumvent some of this with real money if you so desired, but I certainly don't feel like you're capable of paying to win, as it's the combinations of powers, alongside the random factor of the bases attributes that usually make the difference.

I can't speak to the long-term fun of the game yet, but I've been playing for a couple of months and am still enjoying it. It's very good at keeping the progression going and after most games, even now, I'll complete a challenge or upgrade a character. You can then do what I did and start to build custom decks, to work on upgrading cards you've been ignoring, or just using X-Men Characters, for example.

For me, it's the perfect mobile game, capable of wasting three minutes, but also losing an hour too.