SPAM: a free card game where you upgrade your hand mid-match

Let us start with the problem nobody at the publisher apparently raised in a meeting.

The game is called SPAM.

Try searching for it. Try telling somebody about it. Try imagining a search engine's face when somebody types "spam cards connection problem". Steam already has a Spam Runner 2, a Spam Text and an Ambrosia Dice Spam Dungeon.

That is a shame, because inside it there is a mechanic that deserved a name you can say out loud.

The game is out today, and it is free. No score.

The good idea: the Tox Shop

Here is what separates it from other online card games.

Once your strategy is set, you go into battle. And several times during a single match, you get the opportunity to upgrade your cards through the Tox Shop, and build combos.

That is not nothing. In a conventional card game, your deck is frozen the moment the match starts: you play what you built, and the skill lies in playing a predetermined set well.

Here, a mid-match shop, a mechanic from auto-battlers, is grafted onto a card duel structure. Which means your deck is no longer a declaration, it is a starting point. And it means above all that a match can be won by rebuilding while you are losing.

If it is tuned properly, that is an elegant answer to the genre's worst flaw, the matches decided by the third draw.

The rest of the pitch

Collection. Every battle brings you closer to new cards. There are rarities, talents, and hidden synergies. The studio says that as you play, your collection specialises and ultimately defines your playstyle.

Competition. You build a deck to take on players from around the world on a ranked ladder. You can also challenge a friend directly.

An internet connection is required, which is a given for a game that only exists online.

The thousand-euro question

It fits in one word: free.

A free collectible card game, whose description opens with "open, collect, create", and whose content unlocks by playing, is a business model before it is a game.

Everything will be decided by one thing: how fast you obtain cards without paying, compared with how fast you obtain them by paying. If the gap is small, SPAM could become a very good free competitive game, and there is room for one. If the gap is large, the ranked ladder fills with purchased decks and people leave within three weeks.

I am making no accusation: the shop is not open, and the studio has announced nothing on this point. I am simply saying it is the only question that matters, and it can only be answered after launch.

The second question is population. A ranked ladder needs people to match properly. A competitive card game with two hundred players will have you facing the same six decks all evening.

What I will be watching

Whether the Tox Shop creates comebacks or accelerates blowouts. That is the risk with any mid-match shop: it can let the struggling player claw back, or it can hand even more resources to whoever is already dominating. Both are coded the same way, and only the distribution decides.

Whether the hidden synergies are discoverable. The studio makes a selling point of them. Hidden is attractive on a store page and infuriating in play if nothing puts you on the trail.

And whether the game says clearly what it does. Its description is short, enthusiastic and rather vague. I still do not know how many cards you play, what health you start at, or what a turn consists of. Those are the first things a card player wants to know.

There is a real idea in the Tox Shop, and real ideas are rare in this saturated genre. The rest will depend entirely on the shop and the crowd.

It costs nothing to try, literally. It may cost something to stay, and that is what we will be checking.

Ever turned a card game around by rebuilding your deck mid-match? Tell us on the InsertCoins Discord.