Parallel Kingdom will be having an in-game event called the Scroll Hunt that will involve players gathering randomly placed scrolls and then uniting within the game. When four players that have each found a scroll all meet at one location, they will be able to combine their individual scrolls, creating a blueprint for a one-of-a-kind building called the Great Library.

The first four players that unite and successfully build the Great Library will be documented as the founders of the new version of the game, titled “Parallel Kingdom - The Age of Emergence.” The entire scroll hunt is expected to take about two weeks, but it has the possibility to last indefinitely. The new version of Parallel Kingdom will not become available until four players get together and build the Great Library. After the Great Library begins construction, the game servers will go down to update the game. When they come back up, the new version of the game will be available in Google Market and the iTunes App Store. In the new version, the construction of the Great Library will be complete and it will exist forever in the same location where the four players decided to build it.

Justin Beck of PerBlue, Inc., the company that developed Parallel Kingdom, says “We’re really excited about the Scroll Hunt because to the best of our knowledge, no other video game has ever done anything like this.” This contest will let the players compete with each other to find the scrolls first, and then they will have to cooperate to get four people with scrolls together in the game to build the Great Library. Beck says, “Its like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with 4 golden tickets except instead of a tour, you get to usher in a whole new game title”. The four winners’ names will be permanently inscribed on the Great Library. “For the developers and players the whole event should be tons of fun.”

The beginning of the Scroll hunt also marks the 1 year anniversary of the launch of the very first version of Parallel Kingdom, the Age of Emergence.

Game information: Parallel Kingdom was the first massively multi-player role playing game (MMORPG) to use the GPS capabilities of smartphones to incorporate a player’s actual location into the game. Parallel Kingdom can be played on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Google Android devices. On platforms like the iPhone and Google Android, Parallel Kingdom works by utilizing the device’s GPS capabilities to pinpoint the player’s location. On the iPod Touch, the game uses the player’s WiFi location rather than GPS.

The first version, Parallel Kingdom - The Age of Exploration, was introduced October 31, 2008. The second and current version, Parallel Kingdom - The Age of Gathering was launched March 28, 2009 and has over 70,000 active player accounts. The game and its popularity have improved dramatically with each new Age and the developer expects the upcoming version to continue that trend.

Since its inception, Parallel Kingdom has always been free to download and play from Apple’s App Store and the Android Marketplace. The new Age will remain free to download.