Scrolls Is Released to the Masses!

Scrolls was finally released to Open Beta on Monday June 3rd.

This game has only been out a week and I have already sunk a ridiculous amount of time into it.  It's playstyle is a combination of traditional Trading Card Games like Magic, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh etc, but with elements of Computer Based strategy games like Heroes of Might and Magic or Final Fantasy Tactics.  It is an excellent bland of gameplay mechanics and is just generally put together very well.

You play matches against the AI or other human opponents to earn gold.  This gold is then spend in the Card Shop to buy new pre-constructed Decks, random Booster Packs, and individual cards.  You can then go into the Deck Editor to customize which scrolls you will bring into battle.

There are currently 3 factions available in the Beta; Order, Energy and Growth.  A 4th faction currently referred to as Decay appears to be in the works.  As a Mojang title you can expect regular updates of not only bug fixes but loads of new content.  Once you have purchased the game Mojang never charges for new content.  If you have ever played Mojang's first release Minecraft you know they deliver when it comes to updates and content.

So far the community is excellent.  Trading is handled simply and effectively in the chat rooms, and trading cards with other players is a lot of fun.  I have also surprisingly enjoyed the banter that goes on during online matches.  Turns have a 90 second time limit with gives enough time for players to chat and trade friendly barbs as the matches progress.  This is something that is notably missing from more fast paced games like Starcraft 2 as the action has always been to intense to drop focus long enough to chat.  This is something I have always enjoyed when playing Card Games with friends and I was pleasantly surprised to see it translate so well to scrolls.

As it is still in Beta it is still far from being feature complete.  As I mentioned a 4th  faction is already in the works and I'm sure many Interface elements are to be added.  The deck builder is simple and effective but it could definitely use some sorting and filtering improvements.  It could also use access to in game Leaderboards, as currently the leaderboards only appear on the welcome screen after you log in and it only shows the top 100 players.  The chat rooms could also use some UI improvements.


You can pick it up here for $20:
https://scrolls.com/