Marvel Snap, the first game from Hearthstone director Ben Brode’s studio Second Dinner, is a card game with meat on the bones. Stack your 12-card slots wisely with 2D Marvel superheroes to create the ultimate supergroup for dominating opponents in lightning-fast, six-turn tournaments. They seldom last more than a few minutes, but that’s not the “snap” part. Snapping is more of a tactic, a feature that allows you to double a match’s stakes at the loss of some rated points, or cosmic cubes. Opponents may lash out or reject you, causing you to lose (while retaining their points). You get all the adrenaline rush of defeating Thanos without the chipped nails.
Marvel Snap’s simplicity is part of what makes it so rewarding. The emphasis on tiny and fast helps “you rapidly understand all of what your deck and its cards can accomplish, allowing you to focus more on playing and not studying,” according to Kotaku staff writer Zack Zwiezen in his review. “After a few hours, I had a couple decks up and running, and I was having a great time figuring out how to synergize my deck.” Marvel Snap is entertaining, familiar, and, most of all, free.
Number 4. Hearthstone
If you find Marvel Snap to be a little too simplistic and fast-paced, perhaps Ben Brode’s prior big success will be more to your liking. Hearthstone started on PC but seems designed for mobile, and boy, does it fit right in.
After an hour or two, you’ll be creating your own personalised decks and challenging friends and strangers to matches, either online or in person if you both have phones in the same room. Each battle lasts only a few minutes, making it easy to fit into your schedule. Moreover, while you may ultimately be tempted to pay for the random card booster packs, you can get a lot of fun out of Hearthstone without spending a dime.
Number 5. Mini Metro
Mini Metro is mostly a strategy game. You must manage underground lines and stations, linking new stations as they appear, with the ultimate objective of determining how long you can keep your metropolis flowing. There are more than 20 transit-focused cities to pick from—including Seoul, Barcelona, Berlin, Cairo, Osaka, Melbourne, and Hong Kong—and, if it pleases you, you can even construct your own unique networks for each.
