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Scribbly, open-world action adventure Scrabdackle arrives December 2

Follow along the misadventure of a novice wizard in Scrabdackle, a scribbly-art open-world action adventure when it arrives on December 2nd.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/11/scribbly-open-world-action-adventure-scrabdackle-arrives-december-2/

Release/launch news and info!

[p]Hey folks! Got some Big News plus some supporting Other News Components![/p][p][/p]
Scrabdackle Act 1 releases Tuesday, December 2nd!
[p][/p][p]It's happening! I said 'this fall/winter' and 'Q4 2025' and I meant it![/p][p][/p][p]I finished up the launch build the other night, and review keys are going out I think basically around the time I post this? So we're into the final stretch of this five-and-a-half-year-and-counting project, with Marketing-Mode Jake taking the last baton pass! Yes, there'll be Acts 2 & 3 to come, but we only get one 'real' launch, yknow? It's exciting![/p][p][/p][p]What time of day are we launching? ...Dunno yet! Something reasonable, surely. You'll hear about it before actual launch![/p][p][/p][p]Scroll for info on pricing and related launch timing. But first![/p][p][/p][h2]Metroidvania Fusion Fest[/h2][p][/p][p][/p][p]We're in Metroidvania Fusion Fest on Steam all week! MVs are a favourite genre of mine, especially ones that play with the format - plus, there's a bunch of games from friends of mine in the fest with us, like Bio-Gun! Lots of reasons to go check it out![/p][p]Metroidvania Fusion Fest[/p][p][/p][p]Okay, back to Scrabdackle announcements![/p][p][/p][h2]Launch pricing[/h2][p][/p][p]Scrabdackle will launch selling for $14.99 USD for Act 1, and the Act 1 OST (about 40 tracks and 90 min) will launch selling for $9.99 USD barring any discounts and so on.[/p][p][/p][p]Don't use USD as your local currency? No worries, we've got you covered! Here's the full planned international pricing set we're doing. (We know USD conversion rates don't always reflect local currency purchasing power - we tried to take that into consideration for these rates.)[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Answering some potential questions quick before I talk timing![/p]
  • [p]Will the game price ever change in the future?[/p]
    • [p]If you don't buy Act 1 and wait for a later act to release: Yes![/p]
    • [p]If you do buy Act 1 now: No![/p]
    • [p]Basically, the sale price of the base game will increase slightly during both the Act 2 and Act 3 launches (which are still a good long ways out), but once you've bought it, you've bought it. You'll get the best deal if you want to buy now and play Acts 2 & 3 as they come out.[/p]
  • [p]Will Acts 2 and 3's OST be the same price?[/p]
    • [p]No! Act 1 easily has the largest soundtrack since it introduces a bunch of character and combat themes that recur throughout the game. I'm not pre-announcing those prices, but in our planning, they're scaled to the number of tracks on them.[/p]
[p][/p][h2]Other timings & launch FYIS[/h2][p][/p][p]The public demo will be taken down on Nov 18th, two weeks before launch. The end of an era! There's been a Scrabdackle demo available in some form or another for over 5 years now, but it's time for me to start encouraging people to actually buy the game and uh, try and make a viable career out of this whole thing 😅[/p][p][/p][p]Within the community, we're also enforcing a spoiler lockdown for the first week after launch, which is also when we'll do the next reveal round of our "game theory" story/lore betting game. More about both of those topics on the discord server! Please do join if talking about the game with folks or checking out fan art and memes sounds fun, it's a good gang.[/p][p][/p][p]If you're a Kickstarter backer, check the latest Kickstarter update on the topic of key delivery and pre-launch access![/p][p][/p][p]Okay! That's it for me, for now - I'll be back with some minor announcements etc between now and launch.[/p][p][/p][p][/p]

Patch notes - 0.5.09b

[p]Patch notes for 0.5.09b:[/p]
  • [p]Gameplay[/p]
    • [p]Peeky's 'full region' bits reward has been upped from 10 to 25[/p]
    • [p]Removed 'corner bombs' from Waking Fossil's last phase[/p]
    • [p]Updated Ruins Hounds' pursuit code; they no longer start running at max speed[/p]
    • [p]Fixed Ruins Beast leaving its damage hitbox active for 2 seconds post-death (sorry, Harper! 😅)[/p]
    • [p]Garbage Eater can correctly be 'damage pierced' with the Witchbrand when slashing it when it's inside its bin.[/p]
    • [p]Lots of once-absent speaker tags populated for various 'nameless' NPCs[/p]
  • [p]Other[/p]
    • [p]Save stones no longer flicker the 'generic stone' texture on room entry[/p]
    • [p]Cleaned up a few last spots still using the 'old' fonts[/p]
    • [p]Updated some last placeholder UI SFX[/p]
    • [p]Fixed dialogue bubble size rendering issue[/p]
    • [p]Updated pause screen collection total handling, and explanatory message[/p]
    • [p]Technical change to how fullscreen mode is handled - if your device had the rare black screen error, that shouldn't happen anymore[/p]
    • [p]VSync added as a settings option (it used to only ever be off fwiw)[/p]
    • [p]Fixed Skrine boons disappearing from the HUD upon respawn or reload[/p]
    • [p]Resolved glitchiness with textures on certain room transitions[/p]
    • [p]Fixed mousewheel not working for navigating dialogue for some players[/p]
    • [p]Fixed notebook table of contents' right page being out of alignment[/p]
    • [p]Removed a small mouse click deadzone along the top of the screen (in the ruins)[/p]
[p][/p][p]There's also a bug report icon/link on the main menu now! It goes to a database managed by Fellow Traveller that I have access to. (I am saying this in the hopes of no one submitting jokey reports thinking only I'll read it...!)[/p][p][/p][p]Most of what I've been up to the past few weeks has been final prep on Act 1 content - there's some stuff in the game I'm really proud of, but I've had to really hustle to jam it in before launch 😅 I'm gonna get back to that - but I'll be back with some news pretty soon![/p][p][/p][p]-Dev mode Jake[/p]

Patch notes - 0.5.08a + 08b

[p]Patch notes for 0.5.08a:[/p]
  • [p]Replaced placeholder sounds for quest menu interactions (using the menu + related notifications)[/p]
    • [p]Still a little WIP! But trying 'em out.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed issue with motes deciding to wander offscreen (sigh)[/p]
  • [p]Tweak to resolve an inconsistent crash issue for select players.[/p]
  • [p]Adjustment to Litlte Lord's first* fight; they no longer turn invincible once at the start of their third phase, and received a small bump to health for that phase to offset that.[/p]
    • [p]*Did you know the Peanut Village gate and Blustergust Ridge fights can actually be played in either order? Whichever one you get to 'first' will be the easier one, and the 'second' will be harder and assume you've gotten the spells that the first fight gated off.[/p]
  • [p]Added death tracking! This is toggle-able in the Settings menu.[/p]
    • [p]When you die (starting from now on; the game didn't previously track this), an animation will show how many times you've died on that room specifically. That'll make it easy to see how many attempts you made against a given boss/arena.[/p]
    • [p]On the minimap full-screen-view, if you've died in a given room, that will be displayed in the lower-left corner.[/p]
    • [p]Your total deaths will be shown on the pause screen, in the lower-right.[/p]
[p]Patch notes for 0.5.08b:[/p]
  • [p]Temporarily disabled a secret room's teleport access until I have a chance to look into it (it's Thanksgiving today here in Canada! ain't at me desk much)[/p]
[p][/p][p]Beyond that, most of my work lately has been on wrapping up Act 1 release stuff, so working on stuff not in the demo. Some neat surprises in store for the full launch![/p][p][/p][p]-Dev mode Jake[/p]

The Honours Cabinet! Patch notes - 0.5.07f

[h2]The Honours Cabinet: In-game, per-save achievements![/h2][p][/p][p]If you've noticed the "Honours" button being disabled right before loading a save file for the past, uh... two and a half years, and wondered what that button was gonig to be for - today's the day I can provide an answer![/p][p]"Honours" are the term for awards earned throughout gameplay on a given save file - like an achievement on Steam, except gettable per-save. They're stylized as various awards - a battle banner for bosses, a framed diploma for upgrades, a trophy for completionism, and so on.[/p][p]They work a little differently in the demo vs. how they will in the Act 1 release build, so I'll get into that for those interested.[/p][p]In the demo...[/p]
  • [p]Three Honours are now obtainable, for each miniboss/boss accessible.[/p]
  • [p]The others will be visible but locked off, as they're either only accessed in Act 1 content or there isn't a good way to reward it - you may have all the gold stars in the demo, but that's just a portion of the total Act 1 gold stars, so it won't unlock that award (and I'm not making awards for 'all X in the demo' since that milestone becomes irrelevant once you're playing the full game).[/p]
  • [p]Honours in the demo won't unlock associated Steam achievements - this is just the norm for demo apps vs. 'full game' apps on Steam, since they're technically different application objects on the back-end.[/p]
[p]In Act 1...[/p]
  • [p]All Honours from the demo will be carried over, and all 'missing' Steam achievements will be re-triggered for content you've already cleared.[/p]
  • [p]Every Honour will, of course, be accessible! Which is a total of 17. (maybe 18 by the time of the launch? we'll see!)[/p]
  • [p]There will be a few additional Steam achievements not associated with Honours, or a given save file. These are things that are either just for fun, a special kind of challenge that is more about "ever accomplishing it once" than redoing per-save-file, or are essentially non-awards that I want to track progress of on Steam. For instance - it's not really an 'achievement' or accomplishment to pick up your scryglass at the start of the game, right? So that doesn't go in the Honours Cabinet, but I do still want to track it on Steam as a way of basically what percentage of people opened the game but didn't start a new game, and then how many people found the wand in the tutorial area, and so on.[/p]
[p]Maybe a little confusing? We shall see. In any case, you can always just ignore the Honours and achievements and just play the game; generally you'll unlock most of them organically anyways.[/p][p]I've been planning to add these for literal years, as mentioned earlier - there just wasn't a good time to prioritize them until fairly close to launch. I'm excited to have them set up and in place going forwards though![/p][p][/p][h3]Patch notes for 0.5.07f:[/h3]
  • [p]Added Honours Cabinet[/p]
  • [p]Fixed -all- Bulpesh acting like the unique sticker pool room Bulpesh (sigh)[/p]
  • [p]Fixed fringe issue with the game hanging for some users upon quitting from the main menu.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed quest menu keybind just plain missing in mousekey settings[/p][p][/p]
[p]-Dev mode Jake[/p]