Marvel Snap Android Review

Three minutes, that’s the little amount of time that each match lasts in Marvel Snap. It’s such a beautifully designed card game that the short pick up and play nature of the game can mean that a session lasts a lot longer than intended. Struggling to pull yourself away from the game, one three minute match can easily turn into an hour or more of multiple matches. 

Marvel Snap may seem rather complicated at first, but it really isn’t. The ultimate goal in each match is to score the most points in at least two out of three of the locations that appear in each game, thus giving you the win. That’s the easy and basic explanation, but how exactly is all of this achieved? I hear you ask. 

Marvel Snap has you beginning each six round match with a deck of 12 cards, each card being comprised of two numbers: energy and power. The former is the cost of a card, meaning you need the required energy in order to play a card. Energy also increases each turn, allowing you to play higher cost cards as the game progresses. Power, on the other hand, is the strength of the card, and it’s this that is key to victory: the more power you have across multiple locations, the higher the chance that you’ll come out on top at the end of the match. 

The cards themselves are adorned with attractive artwork, and have everything from the world-famous Marvel characters included on them to some that are a lot more obscure. There are loads of cards in the game, with more being added all the time. Deciding on what card/s to play during each round is often a nice mixture of guesswork and skill, with some cards boosting power and little else, while some combine with others to create a satisfying synergy thanks to special skills. Until both players have ended their turn, you won’t know which card/s your opponent has played. 

Cards can be levelled up, although this doesn’t increase their power in any way, but is instead purely cosmetic. Levelling up cards does increase your card collection level though, allowing you to unlock bonuses such as boosters and credits for upgrades as well as brand new cards. It’s always intriguing to see what card you are going to get next. 

As for locations, the three that appear in each match have their own parameters that often affect the flow of the game in a number of ways. Examples include not being able to play certain numbered cards at a specific location, cards fighting during rounds, cards moving to other locations at certain intervals, locations altering to another random location at a specific point, and so on. You can only play four cards in each location. An individual area parameter is revealed at the start of each of the first three rounds, meaning you’ll never know what is going to appear in each match, and how they are going to affect the outcome. 

Marvel Snap also has a push your luck feature, which allows you to ‘snap’ if you have confidence that you are going to win the current round. Snapping doubles the number of cubes that you can win by the end of the game, with cubes being used to level up. It’s a feature that adds tension to the game. 

As a free to play title, the game has so far forgone any predatory behavior, and purchasing with real cash is not going to give you any real major advantages, with most purchases being based around cosmetic variants of cards. You can buy extra credit to upgrade your cards, but this can only be done a limited number of times each day, and the season pass allows you to purchase extra premium content with real cash, which is understandable as they need to make money in some way, but it never feels overly forced on you. Let’s hope it stays this way. 

Marvel Snap is absolute brilliant, addictive fun. I have never fallen in love with a virtual card game as I have with this one. It’s beautifully designed and has one more play appeal for a number of reasons, including how the next match is going to play out as well as what kind of cards will be unlocked next. You’ve heard of the Amazing Spider-Man, well this is the Amazing Marvel Snap right here.