Marvel Rivals’ Spring Festival Event is already being compared to Overwatch’s Lúcioball

NetEase Games has revealed the Marvel Rivals Spring Festival event, which adds a handful of new hero skins and a soccer game mode that might look familiar to Overwatch and Rocket League players.

The team behind the hit hero shooter announced its latest update with a trailer below, promising to kick off the new year with the Clash of Dancing Lions game mode as well as the Fortune & Colors Gallery Card customization event starting on January 23rd at 9 UTC.

Let’s not beat around the bush: Clash of Dancing Lions is very similar to Overwatch’s long-running summer event, Lúcioball. The standard version of both modes sees players compete in 3v3 soccer matches with a few unique twists that take advantage of their heroes’ abilities. Both have of course broken elements from Psyonix’s hugely popular Rocket League, and it looks like the Marvel version of the blasted football experience has a few differences as well.

For starters, the limited-time mode appears to focus on at least three characters – Star-Lord, Iron Fist and Black Widow – rather than just one hero. The soccer ball also appears to be the size of your average, real ball, as players can be seen carrying it around the competition and to the goal. Marvel Rivals and Overwatch already share more than a few things in common, but it will be hard to tell how similar Clash of Dancing Lions and Lúcioball are until the Marvel event drops in a few days.

The Marvel Rivals Spring Festival event allows players to complete tasks for rewards, including the Star-Lord Lion’s Mane costume seen in the trailer. Further details remain under wraps, but NetEase tells players that they will be able to earn other goodies, such as a name tag, spray and more, as part of the event. While the Iron Fist Lion’s Gaze and Black Widow Lion’s Heartbeat outfits were also showcased in the new video, the developers are only telling fans to expect to see the three skins arrive in the game “in the coming weeks.”

In other Marvel Rivals news, players are still looking forward to Marvel’s Spider-Man tie-in skin coming later this month. Meanwhile, many community members are still debating the project’s alleged bot problem and what it could mean for the future of the competitive Marvel video game. For more on NetEase’s popular hero shooter, check out all active Marvel Rivals codes here.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor at IGN. He is best known for his work at places like The Pitch, The Escapist and OnlySP.

Be sure to follow him on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).