Scribblenauts is probably the most creative game I’ve played all year. Basically you are a boy named Maxwell who has to solve puzzles to collect ‘starites’ and to do this you spawn objects by using an on screen keyboard or writing the objects name on the touch screen. So far there have been very few things I have entered that didn’t give me an object. Most of the objects appear to be usable, though I have found a few that you can’t really use. If you spawn a lasso, you can pick it up and “wrangle” a starite with it, which is cool. There are also quite a few internet ‘memes’ that can be spawned. I’m not going to tell you what they are, but I’m sure you can figure it out yourself.
One thing that I found completely interesting was spawnable character interactions. I spawned a ninja and a pirate and they fought. The ninja of course won because ninjas are much cooler than pirates. Ninja propaganda aside though, there are many other interactions like this. If you spawn a cop and a robber or a cop and a ‘bad guy’ the cop will kill the bad guy or the robber. If you spawn a vampire or a goth (the goth shows up as a vampire, much to my amusement) and a cheerleader (and possibly any other spawnable character) the vampire/goth will ‘eat’ the cheerleader, turning her all vampy like him. Some spawnable characters also interact with objects by themselves, given the right tools. If you give a fireman a fire hose and then spawn a fire in front of him, he will put it out. Or if you spawn a robber and a brick of gold in front of him the robber will steal it. If you then spawn another robber the second robber will kill the first robber and take the brick of gold from him. This of course leads to infinite amounts of amusement and I haven’t even started the game yet! This is great because the front screen (the start screen) is just one huge sandbox for you to play in. You can even change the scene and unlock more scenes by spawning objects.
The game play is fun, though some of the levels are a bit fiddly. Sometimes the most obvious way to solve the puzzle doesn’t work and you have to think of a new way, but thinking outside the box usually always works and gets you more ‘style’ points which is great. Starting out in “The Gardens” the puzzles aren’t terribly hard, but even toward the end of The Gardens the puzzles start to get a big challenging. After doing the puzzles initially you can come back for a second try on advanced mode which requires you to solve the puzzle 3 times in a row without using an object you used before on the puzzle. This can be difficult and slightly tedious. However it can also be fun. On one of the last puzzles of the level I spent nearly an hour wracking my brain for new ways to do the same puzzle and once I figured it out (Brain Blast!) I was so satisfied with myself. Besides the puzzle mode, there is also an adventure mode, though to me it just seems like more of the same. The differences between the two modes are negligible at best. Some might argue and say that they are definitely two different modes and the puzzles are completely different, but they really are still just puzzles. I would have liked to see more ‘run through a level and spawn things to fight bad guys and save the princess (or starite, as the case may be) to win the game’ type of thing and maybe I will later into the game, as I certainly haven’t finished it yet, but my hopes aren’t very high.
Overall though, the game is great. I love it and have already spent hours playing it (some of those hours spent not even starting the game, just playing around in sandbox mode) which is more than I spent on drawn to life all together. Scribblenauts has definitely won my heart.
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The next game in my game queue is Mini Ninjas DS. It was supposed to technically be played before Scribblenauts, but Scribblenauts line jumped straight into my ds when it came out and I just couldn’t tell it no.
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Sadly Edward Cullen is not spawnable.
