Is Marvel Snap going to be the next huge Marvel video game after Disney Infinity 2.0 and Crystal Dynamics’ Avengers video game? Second Dinner Studios’ Ben Brode has a plan to make it happen.
Chief Development Officer for Marvel Snap, Ben Brode had previously worked on Hearthstone, but perhaps more importantly, he was a real fan of physical trading card games from back in the day. He describes his experiences that he wants to recapture in video game form thusly:
“When I was a kid we used to collect Marvel trading cards, we’d go down to the card shop or local comic book store and get a pack of trading cards, or even other card games. None of my friends had all the cards, it wasn’t a thing people did back then! It was more about slowly collecting cads, building decks with what you had. It was such an incredible time, and when making the game we were trying to recapture that old-school style of card game.”
And so, Ben makes one very interesting design decision for Marvel Snap: you don’t buy any cards. No money or in-game currency can be used to gain cards. Instead, you play a special card collection level, which is the only place where you can earn cards.
Subsequently, you also don’t have control of what cards you get, but that isn’t necessarily as bad as it sounds as first. Brode’s idea here is it makes players use cards they would dismiss at first, to discover organically what strengths and weaknesses the card has. The end goal is to encourage players to get into deck building, the very key game mechanic that Brode believes was the appeal of physical trading card games like Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon TCG, especially when the scene was at its peak in the 2000s.
You will definitely be surprised how short these card games actually are. You and your opponent have only six turns to fill out a game board, which only has three spaces. Each space can accommodate as many as four cards (some, like The Space Throne, can only accommodate one card), and the idea is to raise a larger number by adding up your cards’ numbers, than the number your opponent raises from their cards. Whoever takes two of the three spaces wins.
If Yu-Gi-Oh convinced anime fans to become hardcore TCG players, Marvel Snap is going for a broader approach. The game has considerably simpler rules that slowly introduce new mechanics and nuances the longer you play. Given Marvel’s past successes with mobile games like Marvel Avengers Academy and Marvel Strike Force, Marvel Snap might just be the IP’s next great mobile gaming hit.
Marvel Snap is releasing today, October 18, 2022, for PC, iOS, and Android. You can read our prior coverage of it below.
MARVEL SNAP Card Battler Game Just Announced
Marvel’s New Mobile Game “Snap”
Source: VG 24/7
