Marvel Snap has just arrived on Steam, which inevitably means thousands more people will be playing the brilliant card game. For me, however, having clocked over 1000 hours with it, my journey with it is coming to an end.
Ever since Marvel Snap dropped last October, I've been hitting up the game on my phone daily for a solid hour or more. Like most live-service games, Snap has had its highs and lows, with developer Second Dinner's approach to monetization and some balance changes not always aligning with what the players want. But overall, it's been an absolute blast to play.
Marvel Snap boasts strengths unmatched by other mobile games out there. Drawing from beloved Marvel characters, Snap offers a vast collection of superhero cards, each uniquely crafted by talented artists like Dan Hipp and Max Grecke. The game's visuals and sounds are spot-on. Unlike Marvel's Avengers, it also perfectly complements the hottest MCU or other Marvel-related Hollywood releases. You can watch Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 or Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and then dive right into Snap to discover all those characters introduced as brand-new cards. It's gaming simplicity at its finest, wrapped in an elegant package.
But what truly steals the show is the game's core gameplay loop. Matches are quick, usually lasting around five minutes tops. It's not just about speed; it's the rich diversity of cards, each with its own unique abilities. With character variants to suit every taste and an element of randomness that keeps you on your toes as things hardly ever unfold according to your grand plan—it's like having a legal, pocket-sized addiction (which I guess is just an opioid), available wherever you go.
Here lies the biggest hook of Marvel Snap: the matches are so short and easy to abandon at any moment that you're practically guaranteed to get that "just one more match" itch, which can quietly devour hours of your life. When I was a newbie to the game, I'd often find myself sinking over three hours into Snap in a single session. New cards kept rolling in, offering fresh deck possibilities, urging you to experiment with new combos.
I've always been a rather casual gamer, and my approach to Snap was no different. It's a free-to-play game, so I did occasionally buy some packs and premium variants just to support the team, but I never even purchased a Season Pass once. Typically, I'd tackle all the daily missions to rack up in-game credits, upgrade a few cards, claim the free seasonal rewards, and then call it a day. I never made a serious push to reach the top Infinity rank during the season, usually winding up somewhere in the 70-80 range. Simply put, I played the game purely for fun.
But things became less thrilling over the past few months. I had already collected 90 percent of all available cards, and snagging the rarest ones became a bi-weekly mission, at best. Furthermore, after months of active play during which I'd experimented with nearly every major card combo, I found myself gravitating towards playing the most stupid decks imaginable. These were cobbled together from the cards I hardly ever used, just to level up the remains of my collection. As you could probably imagine, this usually leads to total chaos.
But even though I played fairly casually, I noticed that Snap had become the first thing I fired up in the morning and the last thing I did before calling it a night, lying in bed, snapping my opponents away. It was cutting into my sleep, and things were getting a bit out of control as I didn't really have any actual goals or have fun anymore; I was essentially running the game on autopilot, checking off missions for those extra credits and grinding boosters to level up cards I knew I'd probably never use again.
Looking back, this state dragged on much longer than it should have. The introduction of the all-new Conquest Mode in June did manage to reignite my interest for a bit, but just one month later, the developers significantly slashed the rewards, and I lost my enthusiasm once again (though I kept on playing).
Moreover, Conquest actually undermines one of the main draws of Marvel Snap, which is its quick matches, tying you to one opponent with a fixed deck for 15 to 20 minutes instead. This mode goes against the very essence of what made the game appealing to me in the first place, but it also helped me realize that I hadn't truly been playing the game for sheer enjoyment for several weeks.
All in all, it's pretty obvious to me now: I need to quit, or perhaps should have done so a while ago. From what I can tell, I've sunk about 1000 hours into Snap, and for the most part, it was a hell of a good time. But, as they say, all good things must come to an end.
I'm not sure how easily I'll snap out of my Snap habit, but I figure uninstalling the game should do the trick. No doubt, I'll catch myself instinctively looking for that familiar icon every morning and evening for a while, just like I did when I quit Gwent earlier, but eventually I'll kick it.