Under The Spotlight Series #9 - Henrik (Carnalizer)

Hi Scrolldiers,Today, Henrik (Head of Production) has been kind enough to take the time to answer some of the questions that you guys have put forward.Hi Henrik,In the early 90's I got involved with a bad crowd. They were doing Role Playing Games and other stuff that made my parents very nervous. Roleplaying is a gateway drug. Soon I was doing heavier stuff, board games and card games, like Magic the Gathering. When I hit rock-bottom it was hardcore miniatures war games every week, with doses of MtG to keep me going during week days.But I was lucky. I found girls, parties and alcohol. That got me out of gaming for a few years. But it's not easy. Once you climb out, they drag you back down. Organised game development got wind of my weakness for pewter miniatures. Soon I was spending my days in a murky basement, sculpting miniatures and inhaling silicon mold fumes. I can't get out, man! It's been PC games, Xbox games, mobile games, web games, skill games, slot machines, more board games. Heck, I'm even making my own card games in a small room in my apartment. Wife's not happy about it, but that's addiction for you.I assume you’re talking about http://www.shieldbreaker.net ? Me and my good buddy Daniel Termin made that as a hobby project. It is a rule set for miniature skirmish battles, so it’s pretty deep down the nerdiness rabbit hole to begin with, but at least we tried making it more accessible than similar rule sets. Worth noting that it’s got nothing to do with Mojang.That’d depend on the game. Take Scrolls for instance; I’ve heard that it was quite tricky to test as paper prototype because of the persistence of stats. Also, some things don’t translate well from paper to digital, and vice versa. Like instant/interrupt mechanics out of turn for instance. I think any form of prototyping is good, but it’s not always easy to interpret the results.These days I manage to have a somewhat functioning life. Most of the time I spend therapeutically drawing angry dudes here at the institution, or "Mojang" as we like to call it. I help out by organising spreadsheets and calming people down when they get that "game design" look in their eyes.I’m very fond of the British school of fantasy art, where over-the-top expression is more important than surface. I love european (british, italian, belgian, french) comics. I try to keep my Scrolls art in line with the hard edge comic book style that Junkboy set in the beginning, but every now and then, my ambition for alla prima paintings show through.I try to play a game or two every day. I’m not overly attached to any one deck, and I don’t play very competitively. I’m more interested in experimenting than winning.Anything that is extreme. Like a Golem Skin on a Gravelock Raider when you have a board full of structures.My favourite resources are Growth and Energy. I really like the idea of Order, but it turns out, I’m really crap at playing Order.It’s vital to have a “Grand Scheme” design, and that is something we’re constantly struggling with realizing and improving. Parts of that scheme we’ve had to graft on piece by piece, as we’ve discovered new things. Once you have that top-down design, you should try to be creative within those limits and find the fun in single scrolls or combos.The board. Having that spatial representation of a match makes it worth watching even if you don’t know what every scroll does. Like in Soccer, once you get that two teams are trying to push a ball into the opposing teams’ goal, you can get some enjoyment from watching, even without knowing the intricacies of the Offside rule. Traditional card games are too abstract to watch.The team’s size. Scrolls is a huge undertaking, and there’s a lot that is kind of ‘required’ to make it work well. We can develop all the features we need. There are no technical, monetary or expertise obstacles. The question is if we can get there fast enough, being such a small team.We have put some thought into it. But, in a card game, you’re not really changing anything worthwhile unless you’re making cards and lots of them. And that’d be a problem in Scrolls, art being the trickiest part. The thought of a CCG with user-created content is intriguing, but I think you have to design it with that in mind from the start. Scrolls is also a more competitive game than Minecraft, so there is a lot of stuff that would need to be in place to safeguard against abuse and whatnot.It’s a joy! I think this is as good a game community that you can hope for online, so it’s always nice taking part. The only frustration is seeing so much expectation and hope for more in players, and always being so pressed for time.It’s pretty fuzzy. The development of Scrolls is open-ended. Personally, I think we need to give more love to people that are less keen to compete against others. You should be able to play and enjoy Scrolls as a single player game for as long as you need, before going into competitive play. At the moment, the single player content is too limited, and the progression for those who are not willing to trade one-on-one, is too slow.Keep being awesome!!11