Highlights
- Marvel Snap has become a popular card game since its release a year ago, attracting new players with its accessible gameplay and gradually revealing hidden complexities.
- The game follows a seasonal system, similar to Fortnite, providing players with monthly Battle Passes that include cosmetic variants of cards, new cards, and balance tweaks.
- Marvel Snap could take its success to the next level by expanding to consoles, as card games like Hearthstone have proven to be popular on mobile and would fill a niche in the console market.
Making its debut on October 18 2022, it's been almost a year since Marvel Snap released, and the addictively simple card game has only continued to grow in popularity ever since. Following in the footsteps of some of the most popular card games out there like Gwent and Hearthstone, Marvel Snap has managed to not only retain but grow its playerbase by enticing newcomers with highly accessible gameplay and hooking them by revealing its hidden layers of deeper complexity nice and gradually.
But while the basic structure of Marvel Snap is strong enough on its own to enrapture its players, it hasn't been the only thing keeping fans coming back month after month. Following a similar structure to live-service greats like Fortnite, Marvel Snap functions on a seasonal system, where players receive a new Battle Pass every month that grants them themed cosmetic variants of cards, along with a handful of new cards, and plenty of tweaks that ensure the game stays balanced. With every new update, Marvel Snap gets better, but there's one big final leap that it still needs to take.
Marvel Snap Should Come to Consoles
For whatever reason, it's still pretty rare for a card game to come to home consoles. While they may not be quite as popular as the average AAA first-party blockbuster release, card games can still be incredibly popular, and when they hit, they hit big. Hearthstone, for instance, is still one of the biggest mobile games around, currently having over 100 million registered players, and having close to 100,000 players online at any one time. But for some unknown reason, Hearthstone has never come to consoles, including the handheld Nintendo Switch.
But with games like Hearthstone and Runeterra not being on consoles, and likely not coming anytime soon, there's a niche there for Marvel Snap to capitalize on. Marvel Snap is still doing very well. According to Steam Charts, the PC version of Marvel Snap is consistently hitting an average of around 7000 players at any one time, essentially maintaining its playerbase since the game's launch almost a year ago. And while statistics for Marvel Snap on mobile aren't readily available, it's likely that those numbers have remained high as well. It only makes sense, then, that Marvel Snap would want to take things to the next level and bring the game to consoles.
The biggest obstacle in Marvel Snap's way - and any other mobile card game - is the interface and the gameplay itself. On PC, it's easy to click a card and drag it to the desired spot, and on mobile that process is even easier with a touch-screen. Figuring out an intuitive control scheme for a card game on consoles probably isn't all that easy. But then again, Marvel Snap's roadmap did mention that controller support for the PC would be coming soon, presumably making a future transition to consoles not that difficult.
While it's extremely rare for a mobile card game to come to consoles, it has been done before. Probably the biggest example of this is Gwent, which did the opposite, and came to PC and consoles long before it even came to mobile. Similarly, consoles are home to plenty of excellent card games that were made specifically for them, such as Slay the Spire or Inscryption. While Marvel Snap is likely doing more than okay right now on just mobile and PC, it would still be fun to see the game come to consoles in the near future.
Marvel Snap is available on Android, iOS, and PC.