Marvel Snap is the first mobile game I’ve spent cash on — what happened?
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I don’t know what Marvel Snap is about, but it’s the first mobile game to make a dime out of me. Ever. It is one of the few games in general that has achieved this. It has earned a place in my mantle of financial shame, along with war frame, League of LegendsY world of warcraft. But how and why did this fairly simple card game pull it off?
For those who don’t know that the current app creates a special corner of my phone’s home screen (and drains my battery), Marvel Snap is a trading card game. Featuring a bunch of Marvel characters with appropriate abilities and comical art, you must build a deck with what you have and battle it out against other like-minded players. As well as being a great fan service game, it does a very good job of replicating that childhood feeling of collecting and playing with cards. That’s what got me in.
You don’t get too many cards too often, and I’m sure that’s why I decided to bust the wallet. He’s pretty smart, really; you first face off against other players and uncover cards as they hit them. There’s this “ohhh, what’s that card?” moment, just like you would if you were playing a new Magic the Gathering or YuGiOh card game. That gets your brain buzzing and makes you wonder how perfect those cards would be in your deck, or what combos you could create. This guy is a loser, he could do a lot more with that card.
So when you finally get that random card from a collection level reward, there’s this natural thrill where you instantly jump into your collection and play. I first had this with Moon Girl, who I had seen used in conjunction with Devil Dinosaur to create a couple of Jurassic heavyweights. Being able to see it done, get the card and do it myself was great. It is the juice around which the game is built.
But, as savvy readers may have assumed, the rate at which you earn cards starts to slow down. To earn cash levels, you need credits. The credits do not take long to arrive, but the updates of your cards start to be more expensive. Eventually, guaranteed card rewards turn into more varied reward boxes, offering a good amount of credits, or even gold! – from time to time, but decreasing your chances of getting new cards.
You end up stuck with the cards you have the longest and your decks start to solidify. Gameplay-wise, this works. At that point, you probably have the resources to create at least one super solid platform that synergizes. For me, it was a Morbius discard deck, with a bunch of common cards like Blade, Sword Master, and Apocalypse combined with rarer options like Moon Knight, Dracula, and Hell Cow to add value. It does its job well, and has undergone several renovations in recent weeks.
But that hunger is still there. Your deck can always be better, right? This, at least for me, is when the temptation finally turned into action and I bought the premium pass. The breadwinner of the live service family. This gave me a ton of bonus cards, quality boosters, and card variants that were nice… but the real prize for me was the credits. Lots and lots of credits, all of which allow me to harvest more upgrades, more levels, and more cards. The hooks were firmly inside.
I think the difference between Marvel Snap and Hearthstone is that the individual cards in Marvel Snap actually matter a lot more. With a deck size of 12, each new card is an explosion of possibilities. Your first few decks may seem good at the time, but gradually you realize that they are full of filler. Each update is massive and has a huge impact on your deck, you start to see the lines to victory clearly, you stop having so many failed spins, and everything feels better. It’s diabolical.
I’m not at the point where I’m buying card skins yet. These are expensive and act as a new pot to dump credits into, rather than a source of more currency. Although, with a good collection of symbiote variants, I could eventually break through. Why did Marvel Snap slip through my defenses? Perhaps since you can’t buy tiers or cards directly, the whole deal feels a bit fairer, even if you can buy a battle pass that comes with credits, which are exchanged for collectible tiers and thus new ones. cards. I haven’t done the math, maybe I’ve been flushed here, but it seemed more worth it than other games I’ve played before. Much more than Genshin or Raid Shadow Legends.
I think that, as far as microtransaction-laden games go, Marvel Snap may have found the formula to work its way into my pocket where many have failed. I know I’m going to buy the next season pass, I don’t think I’m going to go whaling, but maybe that’s what all future whales think at first. Maybe Marvel Snap has me down.
Looks like I’ll soon be able to drag my friends into the same sticky spot, as the developers are working on letting you play with friends in Marvel Snap.
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