After two years and four million copies later, Mojang announced the official release of Minecraft on PC today at MineCon 2011 in Las Vegas. The wildly popular sandbox game that has players punching trees and building Starship Enterprises has become a global phenomenon, thanks to platforms like Youtube where players can share their creative and destructive creations.
Above: Metalface in action
At MineCon 2011, the first convention held in honor of Minecraft, Mojang gave a demo of their upcoming game with the controversial title, Scrolls. Not The Elder Scrolls, just Scrolls. It’s a turn-based strategy game, akin to card games like Magic: The Gathering, where players have a deck to draw from and they use their arsenal of scrolls to summon units to fight. The battlefield is like a chessboard, except with hexagons and the first person to take out three of the five idols of their opponent wins.
Mojang also talked about Colbalt, their first third-party published game by Oxeye. Colbalt is a wacky action platformer starring a robot with a human brain called Metalface. According to the developer, Cobalt is inspired by games like Fallout and movies such as Blade Runner, with a mix of some MacGyver and Night Rider.
In a short demo, the developer showed off the fast-moving Metalface as it mercilessly gunned down some birds and drop kicked grenades like hacky sacks in slow-mo. The demo never moved beyond the beginning of the level, but from that quick, explosive-fueled excerpt, it’s a game to keep an eye on for sure.
Scrolls will be available for pre-order with alpha access for Colbalt by the end of the year.