Anniversaries are a big deal for live-service games, especially the first one. This is largely because most ‘forever’ games don’t even make it to the first year, so it's automatically a reason to celebrate, but also, games tend to change a lot in the first year. The community tends to have a bigger impact on young live service games as developers quickly adjust to feedback post launch. As a result, games like Destiny 2, Warframe, and No Man’s Sky changed in fundamental ways over the course of their first year.
Marvel Snap launched October 18, 2022 after a lengthy beta and it, like most live-service games, has changed a lot. Like any digitaܫl card game there have been nerfs, buffs, and plenty of new cards over the first year, but Snap’s unique approach to acquiring new cards has gone through some pretty significant changes too. There’s also new game modes, additional ways to get variants, and some ways to help new🍒 and returning players catch up. There’s still room for Snap to grow - and there’s some exciting things on the roadmap - but the current state of the game, at least from a casual perspective, is overwhelmingly positive.
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If you’ve tried Snap in the past, things might not seem so different on first blush, which is a good thing. The core gameplay hasn’t changed at all. You still play six simultaneous turns, dropping cards in three randomized locations to compete for the highest total power in each. Matches still only last a few minutes, and it's as easy as ever to get sucked into that ‘one more game’ infinite loop. More cards have made the game more complex, but the game takes into account your collector level when matchmaking. While you’ll still face opponents using cards you don’t have, you should typically get matched against players with the same size collecti𒈔on, which helps even the playing field if you haven’t been keeping up season after season.
The big changes are found in the shop, collection level track, and additional game modes. Shortly after launch a Friendly Battle mode was added that allows you to play against friends, and in July, a tournament-style Conquest Mode was introduced, which is my favorite way to pl🐼ay Snap. In Conquest Mode you play multiple games against the same opponent until one pe🎐rson loses 10 cubes, and each win allows you to climb higher on the ladder, earning more medals you can spend on gold, credit, boosters, titles, and variants. Each season has an exclusive variant you can earn once you’ve purchased nine items from the medal shop, so it’s a great way to enjoy Snap in a slightly more competitive environment.
Snap has gone through a lot of refinement when it comes to acquiring new cards. The unintuitive collector level system has gotten more complicated as features have been added, but it also now gives players more cards more consistently. The biggest change to the system are the new spotlight caches, which you’ll earn periodically as you ascend the collection level track. Every week a selection of Series 4 and 5 (i.e. rare) cards are rotated into the spotlight cache, making it easy to target specific cards. You can hold onto your spotligh💮t cachesꦕ until you see cards you want, making it much easier to build your desired deck.
There’s also a new currency called collector tokens that you’ll periodically earn from caches that can be used to buy specific cards from the Token Shop. Brand new cards are featured there so you can get it right away, while other cards are rotated through multiple times a day. You can pin a card in the token shop for 💙later, that way you can buy it later if you can’t afford it now. If you haven’t completed the Series 3 collection yet, you also get to claim one free card every season, which rotates daily, allowing you to pick a card you actually want. As the number of cards in Snap approaches 300, these new systems help players get the s🧸pecific cards they’re after.
There’s a lot about Snap that remains obtuse, and it’s only gotten more arcane over time. Variants are now separated into tiers based on how they can be acquired: rare can be earned anywhere, super rares can only be purchased with gold in the shop, ultimates can only be purchased with tokens, and premium variants are any rare or super rare, not including pixel variants. There’s no way to determine what rarity a card is based on the art - they don’t have unique features or styles that signify their rarity -✅ though the upcoming Mythic rares will have their own visuals and sound effects.
There’s also the Nuverse Shop, which is a web store that has its own unique items for Snap and a reward track where you can claim freebies based on how much you’ve spent in the game. This isn’t advertised in the game, so I’m not sure how people are even supposed to find out it exists. Snap now has six different currencies: gold, boosters, tokens, medals, tickets, and credits, which don’t help the somewhat negative reputation it's earned as yet another free-to-play, expensive-to-actually-play mobile game. Its daily selection of rotating bundles, variants, and token shop cards makes it difficult to resist dumping out your wallet when you feel like you desperately need a certain card to complete your deck, and the cost conversion from money to gold to tokens is intentionally confusing.
Even with all those concerns, Snap is still the most free-to-play friendly CCG out there, and far less predatory than the mobile game standard. It has grown a lot over the last year by introducing new ways to play and great ways to acquire cards in a tar🍸geted way. New features are on the way, like a prestige level that upgrades as you earn cosmetics, social systems, my💎thic variants, and new game modes. If you dabbled in Snap last year, it’s a great time to revisit one of the best digital card games around.