EPTSo if any of you are looking for a fun/relaxing/simple Card Collecting Game, I just picked up Scrolls by Mojang 2 days ago and am loving it.
First of all, the game is pretty new. It came out as "open beta" about ~10 days ago(?) at the price of 20.99$(price is expected to be raised when the game is released). That is a pretty high entry price for a simple card game but it ensures that there is no pay-to-win model in such a competitive environment.
The game is simple and fun to learn. There are 3 main "resources"(race in starcraft term) right now with the 4th one being developed. You start out 1 one mono resource deck of your choice and you could improve your deck, combine to make hybrid decks or collect to switch to another mono deck.
If I have to describe the game play, I would say it is somewhat similar to a simplified version of Yugioh around the 'elemental heroes' expansion. It also contains heavy emphasis into units positioning which is borrowed over from the turn-based tactical genre.
There are the basic social system implemented that you could expect: chat channel, trading(cards+ingameGold), matchmaking(ranked/unranked), bots, trials(puzzle), etc... and the tournament system is being worked on. Overall if i have to compare, it is fairly similar to SC1/war3 battle net system.
Most of the reviews on the internet about the game has been fairly positive. Moreover, this is developed by Mojang, creator of Minecraft so the quality could be somewhat guaranteed.
However, there are definitely some factors of Scrolls that I do not think they are making the game any better but worse. To begin with, there is a DRM. You have to log in and have internet to play the game. I wish they could just make a seperate vs bot only version so i could practice while Im away on a vacation.
Of course, just like most of the games with DRM, Scrolls servers are also suffered from stability issues but there is always the beta excuse(thanks a lot Valve).
The ranked matchmaking system is linear. After ~100 games, i dont think i have ever seen myself losing points on a lose. This means that the ranking doesnt really reflect on the true skill but rather on how much wins you got. Meanwhile the unranked matchmaking seems to be boundless which seem to match you with anything that is available regardless of skill level. Hopefully once the tournament system is completed, we will get some better indication of skill in order to find more balanced games.
Being a card game, the lack of mobile device version(iOS/android) could also hurts the sale quite a bit. But given the history of minecraft, I think Mojang will learn and rush that out as soon as the game is completed.
Here is a good video that could show you the basic game play:
Overall, i think this game is released a bit too early for its good. For now, 20$ is a bit too much for people who are just looking for a fun and casual experience. However it is a strategic decision from mojang to attack the potential market of Blizzard's Heartstone which was announced to be released later this year F2P. However, since you are reading this on a starcraft forum, the chance of you having competitive blood flowing in your vein is pretty high. So if you are still doubting, I would say you should grab the game and start playing asap
.
