The joy of making combos in games

It’s a fact: one of the most pleasurable feelings one can experience playing games is to combine cards, movements, powers, equipment, making a perfect combo (whether in board/card games or digital ones).



When you can make a combination (or combo) using the right elements to win the game, or just to earn many points on a single turn, you will probably have the feeling McGonigal discusses in her book "The reality is broken" (2011): a fiero feeling. According to the author, fiero is what we feel after we triumph over adversity. You know it when you feel it – and when you see it. That’s because most of us express fiero in the exact same way: we throw our arms over our heads and yell.

Combos are one of the biggest actions that can cause fiero in a player. I myself have experienced this incredible feeling throughout my "ludic life". I have vivid memories of perfect rolls in a D20 in Dungeons & Dragons RPG, great sequences of cards in Magic: The Gathering, the right pressing commands in Mortal Kombat, and many other games.

Recently, I've been experiencing this fiero sensation a lot with the MARVEL SNAP game. Marvel's digital card game won the prize of mobile game of the year in 2022 and it's a good example of this discussion. The game is very fast, with 3 minute matches that use only twelve cards. You must study the best synergy for your deck and play trying to find the best way to reach good combos and destroy the opponent's strategy. In the video below I'm sharing two matches against two different players using a combination of She-Hulk, Absorbing Man and Moongirl cards to multiply the cards' effectiveness.



And you? In what kind of game do you experience the feeling of fiero? What kind of combo makes you happy?

#GoGamers   

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Reference:

McGONIGAL, Jane. The reality is broken. London: The Penguin Press, 2011