It’s been a little over three years since Second Dinner released its mobile card game Marvel Snap. Following the release, Marvel Snap went on to receive Best Mobile Game of the Year at The Game Awards in 2022. One of the things that keeps players coming back time and time again is its ever-changing gameplay.
Like most games today, Marvel Snap has a battle pass system with seasons. Each season is always tied to some theme around the franchise. Sometimes that can be a simple as an MCU tie-in or something as silly as having heroes reimaged as mechs. With Halloween around the corner, it’d only make sense for the current season to have some kind of spooky theme to it, and thankfully, that’s the case with the Undead Horde Season.
Marvel Snap’s Halloween Season Brings the Undead Horde to Life
As the name suggests, the current season is heavily inspired by Marvel Zombies. Of course, with a new season comes a new wave of cards and mechanics for players to use. With inspiration from both the Disney+ show and comics, players can now build a deck around specific zombie variants, which include Colonel America, Zombie Mister Fantastic, Zombie Captain Marvel, and much more.
What’s especially unique about these cards is that they also introduce a new feature called “Horde,” and in short, this allows players to create zombie cards that’ll spawn in any of the three locations. As the game goes on, the horde will get stronger and stronger if you continue to play more zombie cards. To help encourage players to use these new cards, the latest season also introduced Deadlands and Survivor’s Camps as two new locations, which hand out a series of buffs.
Recently, MonsterVine was able to chat with Jason Yang, game designer for Marvel Snap, to talk about why they decided to go with Marvel Zombies with the latest season, how the team landed on the Horde mechanic, and what zombies players can potentially see down the line.
MonsterVine: Did the launch of Marvel Animation’s Marvel Zombies on Disney+ influence the team to build the latest season around Marvel Zombies?
Jason Yang, Game Designer, Marvel Snap: We’ve been interested in a Marvel Zombies-themed season for a while now. The original comic book series by Robert Kirkman and Sean Phillips is a fan favorite, and many of us on the team have been wanting to bring that vision of a darker, zombified version of the Marvel Universe to Marvel Snap when the time was right. We’ve seen a lot of excitement around our zombie variants like Zombie Squirrel Girl, and so we were excited to explore what an entire season of zombies could look like. Halloween season felt like a perfect fit for that, and the release of the show ended up fitting in perfectly.
MonsterVine: Horde is the latest mechanic introduced with the new season. Can you talk about the idea behind it and how the team landed on this?
Yang: One of the main inspirations for the Horde Mechanic was the iconic zombie horde commonly found in zombie stories. We knew we wanted a mechanic in the Undead Horde season to depict the fantasy of making a massive zombie horde, and thematically tie the zombies together. From the very beginning, rather than putting a bunch of zombies into play, the Horde ability created one Zombie Horde card, and all Horde cards worked together to increase its Power. One single Horde card helped to really show the size of the Horde growing with its Power number, and avoided some of the board space difficulties that multiple small ones would create.
From there, we did a lot of iteration on what the execution of cards using the Horde Mechanic should be, and the finer details of interactions, such as what happens when your Horde leaves play. Historically, on Snap, we haven’t done as many smaller keyword mechanics as other card games, so this mechanic also serves as a test run for us on how this style of design does in our game, and if our players will enjoy it.
MonsterVine: Marvel Zombies has had a rich history and popular comics. It appears that Colonel America and Zombie Galacti are a nod to the 2005 run. Can you talk about how this run, the other Marvel Zombie comic book series, helped inspire some of the cards?
Yang: With the many iterations of Marvel Zombies, we decided to take inspiration from a number of different runs rather than focus on just one. The Ultimate Fantastic Four was our main starting point as the first appearance of zombies in the comics, which led to the inclusion of Zombie Mister Fantastic. From there, we looked through the cast of zombies to find ones we thought would be cool, like our first ensemble card in Zombie Galacti.
We also pulled some inspiration from more modern depictions, such as Zombie Scarlet Witch from the zombie episodes of “What If…?”, and Headpool from Deadpool & Wolverine, which led us to having fun drawing from Headpool’s history in the comics.
MonsterVine: Deadlands clearly is meant to cater to those using cards with the Horde keyword. Can you share some insight on how the team landed on this being the main focus with this location?
Yang: We wanted one of our locations to really show what the Horde mechanic is about. As a world filled with zombies, the Deadlands seemed like a perfect fit, with its unending horde of zombie inhabitants spilling out to the other locations.
MonsterVine: The Survivors’ Camp is another interesting option. The goal for this one is to win, to draw a card. But what’s not to stop someone from purposely losing if they’re running a Horde deck?
Yang: Nothing! The idea behind the Survivor’s Camp design is a struggle between the survivors and the horde. Will you come out on top to search for a cure, or join the horde trying to break into the camp? That’s the thing about Marvel Snap–there’s no one strategy that always wins, and it’s up to players to decide how to best approach each game. It’s our job as designers to provide new cards, locations, and possibilities to keep those strategic decisions fresh and exciting!
MonsterVine: As of now, there are ten main zombie cards for players to pick from. Are there any plans to release future zombie cards down the line, such as a Zombie Thanos, Spider-Man, or even Iron Man?
Yang: Perhaps! We’re excited to see how players enjoy this season as we plan our future content, and we’ve certainly kept the door open for some exciting options like those in the future.
MonsterVine: The set takes a lot of inspiration from the 2005 Marvel Zombies. Interestingly enough, in this run, there are a handful of humans that make an appearance, too. Can we expect to see a Marvel Zombies Human variant of characters like Magneto, Black Panther, and Forge?
Yang: We think most of the fun of a zombies theme comes in seeing the heroes and villains reimagined in undead form. That said, I could see the survivors–the characters who weren’t turned (at least initially)–as variants for the base versions of the cards. If players let us know how much they love these stories, then we’ll absolutely look at future opportunities to showcase other characters from the iconic Marvel Zombies storylines.
MonsterVine: Are there any Marvel Zombie cards that didn’t make it to the final product that you’d want to see?
Yang: There’s plenty of cool Marvel Zombies that didn’t make this cut. One of my favorites is the aforementioned purple titan… I wonder how he would fare with the zombie virus instead of the Infinity Stones?
With such rich stories to draw from, and a theme that resonates with so many players, especially during the spooky Halloween season, we had a blast putting together a collection of cards for the Undead Horde season that we felt would make for fun deck-building combinations, incredible art, and fun new memories for Marvel Snap players. Zombies taking over the Marvel Universe is just an awesome concept, and it was a privilege for us to bring our own take on it to Marvel Snap!
