Scrabdackle Releases in Early Access Tomorrow!
- Antal Bokor
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
What do you get when you put together a bit of metroidvania, a pinch of soulslike, a dash of Terry Pratchett, a few cups of Zelda and a whole bucket of charm? Apparently you get Scrabdackle, a hand drawn, top down adventure game developed by jakefriend. It looks like a game I would have come across in the corners of some early digital distribution storefront years ago, replete with hand drawn animation that looks like it was drawn in MS Paint.
Scrabdackle puts you in control of novice wizard Blue as you learn new spells, fight strange creatures, and meet loads of peculiar NPCs as you get Blue back to Wizard Academy. Forced to learn about the world and its dangers, Blue has to (eventually) learn new spells and other tricks to navigate the world and overcome its obstacles. With metroidvania style open world gameplay, Scrabdackle lets you explore the way you want–until you come across an obstacle that you have to use some yet undiscovered item or spell to overcome. It’s a classic gameplay loop, but Scrabdackle stands out in both its whimsical charm and scope–because Scrabdackle looks like it’s going to be a big game.
Scrabdackle is releasing into Early Access, so that means it’s technically not a finished game, but it does release with its entire first (of three) acts completed. According to the developer that means 12-18 hours of gameplay. But that also means you’re going to have to wait a year between Act 2 and another year after that before Act 3 releases. Get in early because the game will increase in price slightly as each new act releases, though what kind of increase to expect is not explicitly stated.
I’ll probably be dipping into Scrabdackle after major updates to see how it’s coming along. In fact, developer jakefriend even equates each of these Acts as an episode in a season of TV–as “they’re designed to be played with a little time to digest between each,” which sounds like a perfect reason not to wait until its finished development until playing.
Scrabdackle will release on Steam Early Access December 2nd.