Marvel Comics characters have been adapted into countless mobile games, but few have the heft of Marvel Snap.
Second Dinner says each game lasts about three minutes–decidedly shorter than Hearthstone and most other CCGs.
You need a javascript enabled internet tool to watch videos.
Now Playing:Marvel Snap - Official Announcement Trailer and Gameplay First Look
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
You and your opponent take turns simultaneously, guessing at which cards they’ll play and in which locations.
At the end of six turns, whoever controls two of the three zones wins.
It’s a simple concept, and one that lends itself to the mobile-first approach.
That starts with the quick gameplay with no downtime and short rounds for a concentrated dose of CCG.
“We managed to make the games much faster without cutting out decision-making,” Brode told GameSpot.
“We cut out waiting.
The fast gameplay means the structure of the game itself isn’t built for some traditional CCG ideas.
“None of those exist in Marvel Snap,” he said.
It’s not about board position.
Instead, it’s all about mind games, bluffing, and trying to control the board.
It’s a very interactive game, but in a completely different way.”
As an example, he cites card advantage.
That relies on card advantage, having more value in your hand at the expense of aggression.
That’s not really a factor here, according to Brode.
But this was also a unique challenge.
you might’t play cards there next turn.'
So you’re able to really control the game with his webs.
Or Hulk is just this massive card that has a huge amount of power.
No matter how many times he’s killed, he’s always coming back into the game.
But Brode says the design process sometimes works in reverse.
With Marvel’s massive roster of heroes, that meant scouring the archives.
“And so I just flip through the encyclopedia looking for someone who’s got a power set.
Like, ‘I need a teleporter.
Let me go look for all the teleporters in Marvel.
Oh right, I forgot about that character.’
There’s so many Marvel characters, there’s always somebody who matches a design really well.”
“So if I’m winning, I could Snap.
And now I’m saying I’d like to play for double the stakes,” Brode says.
“Every game is played for stakes, just like in other games with the rank ladder.
If you win a game, you gain some rank points.
If you lose a game, you lose some rank points.
Our rank points are Cosmic Cubes.
So the more Cosmic Cubes you have, the higher your rank on the rank ladder.
I’m going to Snap.'
“You just bail and you feel smart for bailing because you saved yourself some Cubes.
So you’re like, wow.
I avoided a disaster there.
I only lost one Cube.
Now I’ll go play again and hopefully win a bunch of Cubes.
But not all locations in the pool are weighted evenly.
Brode said that some locations are more fun if they only appear once in a while.
So you’re going to play like the smallest game in one location.
Each of you gets to play four cards.
Choose your best four cards wisely.
And that’s really fun sometimes, but it’s not fun every game.
And so it’s very rare; it doesn’t show up that often.
It creates really cool stories when it does.
And then some locations are just really, really fun to play on all the time.
They create really interesting gameplay scenarios, so those are a little bit more common.”
As a more common location, Brode cites Central Park, which adds a 1-power squirrel to every location.
Wakanda throws up a power shield that keeps cards within from being destroyed.
It’s the constant push and pull of controlling these zones that gives Marvel Snap its complexity.
“When you’re designing a game, you want strategic depth,” Brode said.
“That’s super important.
And you want complexity for the ability for people to learn the game to be super low.
That’s super important.
Maximizing the difference between those two things is the goal.
So I think we’ve done that.
We have the lowest complexity with the highest strategic depth.”
Got a news tip or want to contact us directly?
