By Adam Smith on July 5th, 2012 at 5:00 pm.
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.
05/07/2012 at 17:12 MondSemmel says:
Indeed, that old Magic: The Gathering game was spectacular. I actually own its boxed version, plus another expansion box, although it’s never been totally clear to me what was different between the two.
I received these games as presents when I was hardly able to understand any English. That made the game rather…complicated…in the beginning.
05/07/2012 at 21:04 Leandro says:
That MtG game was awesome, made me go out to buy some real cards of my own. I remember also loving Pokemon TCG on the Game Boy Color.
I think card games with campaign modes are overall a great idea. The cards themselves are a natural “loot” and tinkering with your deck to become more and more powerful just scratches an itch. Even Final Fantasy VIII’s brilliant Triple Triad minigame is proof of that.
Only the Yu-Gi-Oh games fell short for me, but I blame that on the card game itself, felt a bit shallow from what I played. The art is also either bad or silly.
05/07/2012 at 22:32 Ringwraith says:
That was always great fun.
Especially when I managed to knock the final boss down to minus 200 life when you’re only ‘supposed’ to do as much damage as possible and not ‘win’.
06/07/2012 at 07:35 frightlever says:
Anyone play the Etherlords series? I mean they made two so obviously someone played them or that would be an awkward pitch meeting for the sequel – “I think this time we might get a sale”. No, someone definitely played them. But they had a campaign and a MtG-influenced battle system.
Hmm. Gamersgate has the original but not the sequel. And nine quid for a ten year old game. I’ll leave my nostalgia where it was thanks all the same.
edit: FOUND my Etherlords 2 disk, but a quick Google suggests it won’t run on Windows 7 and I’m so bogged down in things Dawn of War right now I’m not about to find out for sure. Stupid pile of old games I want to play again isn’t anywhere near as big as my pile of new games I haven’t installed yet, but it isn’t helping.
06/07/2012 at 10:15 Atrak says:
Always loved the Etherlords games, I wish they would make more, or even some expansions, but its been quite awhile now.. So I guess the dream might have to stay a dream. :-(
06/07/2012 at 10:17 dibkins says:
That game was sweet. Fighting wizards with bedbugs just doesn’t get any better.
06/07/2012 at 14:08 Ringwraith says:
Although the second one was far better than the first, as the campaign was much more enjoyable, possibly due to being less unfair by not forcing you to win every single battle or fall behind in its TBS design.
05/07/2012 at 17:15 Keyrock says:
[heavy sarcasm] I thought this was an Elder Scrolls game, now I’m super disappointed and I feel like Bethesda’s flagship franchise is forever soiled in my mind [/heavy sarcasm]
05/07/2012 at 17:21 x1501 says:
Thanks for including the sarcasm brackets. Otherwise, I’d think you were completely serious.
05/07/2012 at 20:04 disperse says:
x1501: Are you being sarcastic? I can’t tell without the sarcasm brackets.
05/07/2012 at 22:11 LozTaylor says:
disperse: Are you being sarcastic too..?
06/07/2012 at 00:06 caddyB says:
I think he is! It’s so hard for us to tell without the brackets!
06/07/2012 at 00:08 benkc says:
[not-sarcasm] At this point, I’m uncertain of the sarcasmness of almost every post in this thread! [/not-sarcasm]
05/07/2012 at 17:20 mooken says:
Browsing around the interwebs recently, and found that there is a hard-working community updating the Microprose M:TG game to run on Windows 7, along with the ability to use more recent cards.
They’ve even packaged it in a single easy-to-install ISO.
05/07/2012 at 17:43 Zanchito says:
Woah! Link if possible? I think many people here would enjoy that.
05/07/2012 at 17:50 Didero says:
I think it’s the first result when Googling for “MicroProse Magic The Gathering custom installer”. But it also links to an ISO download of the original game, so I don’t know how legal that is.
05/07/2012 at 17:55 Zanchito says:
Well, Google sure is legal everywhere.
I think adding a “h33t” as another key word on your google search gives a better result, with a streamlined installer.
[edit] Damn, the edit post button doesn’t work in Chrome?
05/07/2012 at 19:46 Mr. Mister says:
It does in mine.
[light sarcasm]EDIT: turns out it doesn’t.[/light sarcasm]
05/07/2012 at 18:15 sonofsanta says:
Superb.
/parties in the geekiest manner
05/07/2012 at 18:12 sonofsanta says:
Far from it, and as a result I may actually start paying attention to Scrolls now.
05/07/2012 at 18:19 Beelzebud says:
Wow they’re really changing things up for this new Elder Scrolls game.
05/07/2012 at 18:44 Maldomel says:
I do fondly remember that MTG game. Pure gold.
On the main subject though, I didn’t receive anything to put me in this alpha, and this is not cool at all. Then again, I can’t remember if I signed up in the first place. Duh.
06/07/2012 at 00:09 benkc says:
I can’t even remember if there ever were signups. I guess that means I probably missed them.
05/07/2012 at 19:37 Lobotomist says:
Bethesda have reached pinnacle of perfection with Skyrim 3D graphics and are now returning to 2D hand drawn art in this new Elder Scrolls game!
I tottaly called it !
05/07/2012 at 19:55 niussd says:
http://is.gd/PFQQs4