Scrolls Message Board

Scrolls - the other game by Mojang - is on its way to iPad, courtesy of Boulder Dash XL 3D and Magicka: Wizards of the Square Tablet dev Ludosity. The collectible card game makes sense for a touchscreen experience, but as for what might be unique to that experience, we'll have to wait and see. Mojang said it'll have more news on the tablet port "soon."

The Minecraft studio also plans to deal out a few tweaks to Scrolls, including a visually clearer ranking system, and some audio and visual additions to give duels a bit more pizzazz. There are also revamped, "snappier" tutorials in the works, as well as a new demo. [Image: Mojang]

Fans of collectible card games have a lot of games to choose from lately, but this is an incentive for getting involved with Scrolls. The Magic: The Gathering inspired game by Minecraft-creators Mojang is offering a Christmas gift: if you own the game, you now have a free copy you can gift to a friend.(more…)

A substantial update for Scrolls, the collectible card game from Minecraft developer Mojang, is in the works and slated to drop sometime next month. The patch will extend customization options, add a new mode called Judgment, toss in some spectator tools and top it all off with over 40 new Scrolls to unfurl.

In Judgment, players create a deck of cards (or Scrolls) from a randomized set and engage in five different competitive matches. Based on your performance over those five matches, you'll then receive a corresponding reward. The mode is designed to level the playing field between expert and more novice spellcasters. Spectator mode allows players to watch their friends matches.

Scrolls launched its premium beta back in June. Interested parties looking to buy into the beta can currently access the game for $20 through the game's official site.

Scrolls is available in open beta today, for $20 - also known as £13 or €15, depending on where your banks are located. Scrolls is a digital, collectible card game from Mojang, the people behind Minecraft. And, just like Minecraft, buying Scrolls during the open beta gives players all subsequent game updates for free.

In its current form, Scrolls isn't feature-complete, but it includes a deck builder, 25 trials, trading, profiles, the store, and quick, challenge and ranked matches. Scrolls has an in-game currency, gold, and real-money currency, shards, though Mojang promises shards are "completely optional, and will never be required to stay competitive."

Check out Scrolls for PC and Mac via the game's official site.

Scrolls, the next venture from Minecraft creator Mojang, rolls into open beta next week, over two years after it was first announced. The digital collectible card game will be purchasable for PC and Mac on June 3, and unravels at a price of $20/€15/£13.

Yes, those are cute little fluffy bunnies in the launch trailer, waiting to be decimated by a giant barrage of projectiles. One of the Scrolls alpha challenges sees you square up against a barrage of bunnies, whose scroll description reads "they're not so cute anymore, when your crops are gone." Still, poor bunnies... couldn't things just be settled amicably?

Mojang’s fantasy card-deck battle game thing arrives next week! Scrolls, as it is so legally called, has been impressing a wave of beta-tester people with its tight production and carefully poised strategy mechanics. There’s a good chance that this will be the deck-building strategy of 2013. Not that there’s a lot of competition there, but you get the idea. Yeah. Anyway, it makes it official debut next week.

Fancy launch trailer below!(more…)

Minecraft developer Mojang's card-game-slash-board-game-with-RPG-elements is finally seeing the light of day. It certainly took them long enough. In addition to giving us an impression of what the battling, trading, and collecting will look like, the trailer also has a launch date for the game's open beta: June 3rd.

Minecraft developer Mojang is targeting a late April release for an early PC beta of its next game, Scrolls. Speaking to Polygon, studio co-founder and game designer Jakob Porser said, "We'll release it early at a discount. With the help from our community, we'll take the game to the next level and see what we want to do and what they expect out of the game and you can work around that."

The digital collectible card game is due on Mac shortly after, and a Linux release is being considered too. The news follows Blizzard's PAX East announcement of its own free-to-play digital CCG, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. Porser, however, is philosophical about how that announcement impacts upon Scrolls.

"In the end the consumer gets multiple choices and we have to step our game to try and make the best possible product, the best possible game we can," he told Polygon. "If Blizzard makes the better game, then all credit to them and we need to move on to something else."

We sent Rich Stanton to the exotic location in front of his keyboard to play Scrolls, the next game from Minecraft maker’s Mojang, which is currently in the throes of its alpha test stage. Needless to say, the deck-based card game has some familiar influences.

I’m going to tell you about Scrolls, the new game from Mojang, but first it’s confession time. This is the opinion of a loser. And not just an occasional loser. I’ve played twenty five games of Scrolls and, while there have been chinks of light in the darkness, I’ve been getting absolutely stomped.(more…)

#mojang At PAX Prime in Seattle, Markus "Notch" Persson and his studio Mojang have built a neat "Minecraft Museum" where they're displaying memorabilia and art from their hit PC game. But they've also got something a bit feistier on display. More »

As reported by the official blog, Mojang has declared its upcoming Minecraft follow-up, Scrolls, to now be in closed alpha. Just like Minecraft, the game is will roll out one piece at a time, first in this testing phase, with more features to come after the official release. In the current alpha, players can build up their deck of scrolls and fight against an AI opponent, or play random matches in multiplayer.

It sounds basic, but Mojang wants to iron out the core gameplay before adding any more complexity. The closed alpha will use "quite a modest number" of players to begin with, and eventually grow into a full open beta.

Mojang’s card combat game, Scrolls, enters its alpha state today, with a random selection of those who signed up due to receive email invites. Alpha accounts supply a full set of scrolls, access to the deck builder, a basic single player mode, multiplayer and a tutorial. That sounds like a decent amount of things to be getting on with. I’m hoping the single player campaign planned for the final release will be decent. I can’t be the only person who enjoyed the slightly wonky MicroProse Magic: The Gathering, with its huge, random maps.

#mojang Scrolls, the upcoming game from Minecraft developer Mojang, is entering alpha today. Yes, that means that Mojang is sending out alpha codes for players; however, before it does, the studio gave a rundown of how the codes will be sent out and what the alpha includes. More »

Scrolls, the collectible card game in development at Mojang, will soon be in closed alpha state and once stable enough will switch to a purchasable beta. The alpha will have AI opponents, allowing for the single player to test out his decks, but it won’t include the campaign mode, a world through which the player travels, picking fights to add new cards to his/her collection. Scrolls’ website has also been updated with the first footage of the game in action, which makes me think of a cross between Magic: The Gathering, HOMM and a two player version of Plants vs Zombies without the zombies or plants. It does seem to have tracks onto which creatures and powers are summoned though, and idols to defend at the end of those tracks. Watch it below.

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Mojang's "paid beta" model wasn't a Minecraft-exclusive, and the Swedish studio is implementing the same structure with its next game - Scrolls. Company co-founder Jakob Porser detailed how that'll play out for Scrolls on the game's fancy new website, where he said, "We are rapidly approaching the closed alpha of Scrolls."

Said closed alpha will "be far from a feature complete version of the game," Porser said, but it does feature, "multiplayer matches, single player matches vs AI, and the Deck Builder, where you can build your decks out of the 100+ scrolls that currently exist in the game." As development continues, the closed alpha will enter open beta and thusly be open for purchase. Porser promised "a reduced price ... with some added benefits" for beta buyers, but stopped short of revealing what those benefits are.

Of course, that beta won't be feature complete either, and Porser said the game will eventually include a full single-player world for battling (over various scrolls), as well as an auction house, character customization, and questing. And considering how this all worked out last time, it might not be the worst idea to get in on Scrolls early. Wanna see how the game looks before you buy into anything? There's also a new trailer above.

Notch seems to be happy with the outcome of Mojang's legal tussle with Bethesda, which allows Mojang to use Scrolls as the title of a coming game that looks and plays nothing like anything in the Elder Scrolls series. Bethesda retains the trademark for "Scrolls," but Mojang can use it for its title, a result that had Notch beaming -- but as with all legal battles, it's not that simple.

After the celebratory "Yaaaay! <3" Notch tweeted, "The actual document I signed was like a billion pages, so at least we know a bunch of lawyers got rich. Good, wouldn't want them to starve." Within those billion-odd pages comes an interesting deal that prohibits Mojang from using "Scrolls" in the title of any sequels to Scrolls:

"ZeniMax has licensed the 'Scrolls' mark to Mojang to be used solely in conjunction with its existing Scrolls digital card game and any add-on material it makes to that game," a Bethesda statement reads. "The terms of the settlement bar Mojang from using the Scrolls mark for any sequel to the current card game, or any other video game."

Either Notch doesn't plan on making more than one iteration of Scrolls, or the subsequent titles will be called "Reams," "Parchments" or "Ancient Paper that One Rolls Up and can Unravel to Read From, Such as a Decree."

Everything's coming up Notch. The Swedish indie game rockstar has so much money he's giving it away, presented several GDC panels to adoring throngs, and has even sparked a fashion trend (Notch hats were the accessory at GDC). And now he's settled with Bethesda over the use of the name "Scrolls".

Notch tweeted today that the two companies had settled, adding "Yaaaay! <3" Mojang had been locked in a court case with Bethesda, who claimed that the title of the upcoming game was too close to the "Elder Scrolls" series name. Notch later tweeted details of the agreement: "The settlement is that we give them the trademark," he said, "get to keep the name, and won't make an Elder Scrolls competitor using the name." Not that it was likely to in the first place.

#mojang Over Twitter, Mojang founder and Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson said his company and Bethesda Softworks reached a settlement in their trademark dispute over Scrolls, the name Mojang has chosen for its next game. More »

Because we, as a species, have allowed our reality to become so ridiculous that people can own the rights to a noun, there has been an ongoing battle between Bethesda and Mojang over the right to use the word “Scrolls” in a game name. Bethesda’s very long running The Elder Scrolls first-person RPG is utterly indistinguishable from Mojang’s card-collecting Scrolls. Wait, is it the other way around? I’m so confused! But the good news is, their lawyers have finished spending each other’s money and there’s an agreement!

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#mojang Mojang, custodians of Minecraft, are also working on a new game called Scrolls. Beyond that? The Swedish outfit is developing a further three games, all of them unannounced. More »

#gdcawards The nominees for the 2012 Game Developers Choice awards have been announced. The awards, which will be held at March's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, are one (if not the) most prestigious awards ceremonies in gaming. They occur the same night and location as the Independent Games Festival (IGF) awards. More »

#holidays As a gamer that regularly reviews big titles and otherwise has the means to procure his own video game entertainment, it isn't often I get to experience the joy of a thoughtful video game related gift. Instead, I give things to my family and live vicariously through them. What did they get this year? More »

I've seen Scrolls, but I doubt it'll be the same game when it releases. If one thing stands out from the various demos I've seen of it here at Minecon, it's that the team hasn't decided on much of anything yet. Sure, they have the basic systems in place, but a large portion of the game is still being fleshed out, with future player input playing a big part in the game's future development...

Mojang, creators of Minecraft, have given some new details about their upcoming card combat game Scrolls. It's been in development since around March, and is meant to be a multiplayer experience...

According to Mojang's Markus "Notch" Persson, the studio's upcoming Scrolls will not be a free-to-play title, though it will utilize concepts seen in free-to-play titles. Persson told Gamasutra, "The idea is that you can play for free after the initial payment, which includes a lifetime subscription of new scrolls at regular intervals," adding that more free scrolls can be earned by doing things like participating in tournaments. Of course, players can also buy additional scrolls, should they desire.

Persson's comments to Gamasutra came after a blog post in which he revealed his distaste for the term "free to play." Wrote Persson, "The reason anyone switches to 'free to play' is to make more money," saying that free-to-play titles are designed primarily to get players "hooked," ultimately creating "a game that's designed more like a slot machine than Half-Life 2. The words "free to play" are misleading, he wrote, saying that "we should call it 'as expensive as you want it to be' or something."

Here’s the first part of a documentary following the making of Mojang’s new game Scrolls. It’s a shame that, as with most of the discussion elsewhere, so much of this concerns the name rather than the game, but it’s still worth a watch if only to see the legal issue being discussed by the lead designer. Especially because he’s looking rather dapper while discussing it, with a bottle of Staropramen his only prop, suggesting that this is a man who has better things to do and better places to be than a courtroom. Do we actually learn anything about the game? Not really, beyond the fact that there will be ‘dust puff’ animations, among others. You can see the puffing of dust for yourself, below.

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When they're not busy producing work for Penny Arcade or working on development house documentaries, the folks from 2 Player Productions are also slicing off choice cuts of tape regarding the legally embattled next game from Mojang Specifications: Scrolls. The documentary group's website recently revealed the first of several pieces that make up the entire Scrolls doc, featuring interviews and footage from inside the studio.

As expected, Mojang co-founder and Minecraft lead Markus "Notch" Persson makes a few appearances, but the focus instead falls on Scrolls lead Jakob Porser, who 2 Player describes as "long-time friend of Markus "Notch" Persson and co-founder of the company." The first clip, seen above, delves into the germination of the project, the team, and eventually the legal battle brought forth by Bethesda regarding the name, Scrolls.

Especially interesting, Porser notes during the clip that "Minecraft isn't just a great game, it's a Cinderella story," when asked whether he thinks Mojang will be able to overcome its first game's success with future projects. "Even if we do the world's best game after Minecraft, it's not gonna be a Cinderella story," he admits. But perhaps a well-publicized legal battle with a monolithic corporation will help, we imagine.

For anyone who doesn't know, Zenimax (the parent company of Bethesda), sued Mojang earlier this year for using the word "Scrolls" in its new game's title. Bethesda believes the word infringes upon its The Elder Scrolls trademark. When we last heard about the lawsuit, Bethesda talked about being forced into it in order to protect its trademark...

Notch tweets: “We won the interim injunction! We can keep using the name “Scrolls”. ZeniMax/Bethesda can still appeal the ruling, but I’m very happy.”

Of course this is only the first step, and we expect Bethesda will certainly take the process to its conclusion at a full trial.

As you are likely already aware, Minecraft-makers Mojang are currently embroiled in the first stage of legal proceedings brought about by The Elder Scrolls-makers Bethesda, in a dispute over whether the name “Scrolls” can be used for the title of the second game. Keen to find out a little more about what it all means, I had a chat with Alex Chapman, an intellectual property lawyer at Sheridans’ Solicitors in London, who is advising on the case. Read on below for some elucidation into what’s going on, and what to watch out for when you are naming your own game.

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