Minecraft developers Mojang have announced that their other, non-Minecraft game Scrolls is set to hit public beta next month, with a pricing model similar to Minecraft (expect a $10 buy-in, or thereabouts).

The beta will include both multiplayer and a single-player component. Mojang’s Jakob Porser told Polygon that “The AI is extremely well down and it’s constantly kicking my butt.”

But do they think it will displace Minecraft? Not at all. “I have no expectation that Scrolls is going to sell way beyond Minecraft, absolutely not,” said Porser.

“What I would like is for the game to find a core, a bunch of players that actively love the game. The beautiful thing with Mojang and the success of Minecraft is that we really don’t have that pressure, that every game has to sell x amount of copies or we’re going to go bankrupt. So we’re in a good position that we can experiment and try some of the stuff that we want to do and we are going to do that.”

Source: Polygon

Upcoming Mojang game Scrolls went into alpha testing yesterday. The team are going to start by handing out only a small number of keys and gradually release more as time goes on, with recipients will be selected at random from the group that signed up and notified by email. And before you get your hopes up, they aren’t looking to expand their pool of testers at this time, so if you haven’t already signed up, you’re going to have to wait until the beta rolls around. In any case, head over to the blog for more details, or if it tickles your fancy, there is a Scrolls community and forum over here.

Source: Scrolls.com