14 DAY TRIAL // Mojang, the Swedish video game development studio responsible for Minecraft, is also working on an upcoming card battling game, which is apparently due out sometime later next month.
While Minecraft has become something of a cultural phenomenon, like a new generation's virtual Lego bricks, a sandbox where creative juices can flow freely, Scrolls is a much more unassuming project, with a pronounced niche appeal.
If in Minecraft you can build pretty much everything, from various famous architectural landmarks to Zelda or Guild Wars castles, and even the entirety of Denmark, Scrolls will only challenge you to place creature cards on a hex map and fling some spells around, in the effort to defeat a dueling mage.
And if in the case of Minecraft, you are always afraid to gaze into its abyss, for fear of the abyss staring back into you, the only disturbing activity reported in relation to Scrolls was a lawsuit with Bethesda Softworks, who argued that Mojang infringed on their Elder Scrolls franchise.
In the meantime, the suit was settled, the game moved into open beta, Microsoft acquired Mojang together with all its properties, and there are no more Lovecraftian horrors lurking around the corner.
Scrolls is a collectible card game where you have to build yourself a deck consisting of battle units, spells, support structures and other such items, with the hex grid battlefield also introducing some tactical challenges and opportunities, such as proper positioning and turn-by-turn decision making.
Scrolls is closer than we might be expecting
While Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang and Minecraft for an exorbitant sum is gathering all the press, a small team from the Stockholm-based studio is busily toiling to get Scrolls done as fast as possible, which might be as early as next month.
Mojang's Owen Hill reckons that Scrolls will be fully released next month, by late November, although no official announcement has been made yet.
The studio's plan is to release a final version of Scrolls on PC, Mac, iOS and Android tablets at the same time, after spending close to a year in beta.
Henrik Pettersson, a producer and artist for the game, says that Mojang isn't aiming for phones with the first version of Scrolls, as reported by TouchArcade.
"Final release just means we're taking it out of beta, but we want to continue development after that," Pettersson explains, pointing to the latest client update, which introduced a number of 56 new Scrolls, adding new spells and mechanics, but also a marketplace for players to trade and sell items on.
Microsoft fully supports Scrolls
The development team isn't concerned about being acquired by Microsoft, stating that it will most likely mean that they will have to add a Microsoft logo when the game starts, and not that someone is going to stamp down and have them change the way that Scrolls is monetized.
Scrolls has been in production for around three years, and the team is happy that the people at Microsoft are excited about it and that there won't be any changes coming in the short term.
"They're buying Mojang to keep Mojang working as it has been," Pettersson opines. Taking into account the fact that Redmond most likely knows that the surefire way to alienate Mojang's extensive fanbase is to start changing things as soon as the properties change hands, Scrolls is bound to be left unharmed, and as charming as it ever was.
