Review: Scribblenauts

Platform: Nintendo DS

Developer: 5th Cell

Publisher: WBIE

# of Players: 1 (Wi-Fi: 1 – 2)

Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10+)

Official Site

Score: A-

The first two things you'll need to realize about Scribblenauts are as follows:

1) it's not a platformer at all
2) Trying to play it as such will make for quite a bit of frustration

The game is actually a fantastic hybrid puzzle/brain salad sandbox experience that lets you dive in to test your word power in a lot more interactive manner than traditional pen and paper word games. There are a load of puzzle as well as action based challenges that require a bit of thought if you want to see all the game has to offer. If you're like me (that is, ancient enough to actually remember those classic Infocom or other text-based PC adventure games), what's here is a bit like those oldies. However, you get to see what you input as text materialize on screen and you can interact with your choices in a number of amusing ways. Of course, you can simply sit back and let what you're called forth do whatever it wants to do, which in my opinion, is the beauty of Scribblenauts' design.

Even the title screen is a total blast, as it's just the game's “hero,” Maxwell against a sunny outdoor backdrop waiting patiently until you input something using the stylus or in-game keypad. If the 22,000 word dictionary registers it, *poof!* down comes an Iceberg, Rally Car, Wildebeest, Cthulhu or whatever else you can think up. Some words unlock new title screens, but you don't know exactly which ones will work and which wont. After the surprise of opening up two screens in a row with off the top of my head selections, I spent my first three or so hours with the game spelling whatever I could think of until I'd unlocked all 15 title screens. Of course, dinking about on the title screen isn't all the game offers. The object in the main game is to grab the Starite that lies at the end of the stage using objects created from words you enter using the stylus or keypad.

The main game is divided into Puzzle and Action stages and you can hop into the different types of stages at your leisure. I'd recommend tackling a bunch of Puzzle levels just to grasp the mechanics and see that the game is not your garden variety side-scroller before jumping into the action levels where things get tougher. Then again, Maxwell has no “lives”, so failing at a stage really means you just have to try again until you get it right. The game dictionary will suggest words if you misspell something (or just tap out letters randomly) and if you like, you can use the stylus to spell out words. The letter recognition is off at times, turning an S into a G or B for example. I stuck to the keyboard after a few too many bad CPU guesses. My handwriting is fine, by the way, as I'm one of the few people I know that still writes out letters and postcards. Sometimes the game can get a bit wonky trying to grasp what you're trying to spell.

Speaking of wonky, as noted at the start of this review, the touch screen movement controls are going to irk those expecting this to be some sort of run 'n jump Mario pastiche and yes, it can be frustrating to see Maxwell go running right off a ledge into lava or into some other hazard as you tap away trying to guide him. On the other hand, once you get used to tapping the screen ONCE (and not too far from where you expect Max to end up), things get much better. The marionette-like character animation in the game reminded me of the old Sega Genesis/Sega CD game, Ernest Evans, which had similar control issues. Of course, that game happened to be a platformer packed with stuff trying to kill you, and a painful one to play at that even when you finally got used to the quirky movement of the titular character.

I had more issues with ropes, chains and anything used to bind two items together. There's a point to point attachment system here that works with two immobile objects, but when trying to hitch a horse to a cart or one movable thing to another, it can be very hit or miss. If that horse or tamed beast is moving while you try to hitch it up, it can be a pain, It would have been nice to control the length of the rope or whatever you wish to hook up, as that seems to be part of the problem. Still, when it works, it's quite funny to see in motion. The words “Grapple” and “Hinge” also comes in handy when attaching some objects, so keep that (and a few others) in mind...

Visually, the quirky style works and 5th Cell really crammed in a load of different sprites for as much as they could. Sure, there are a lot of words that produce the same sprite, but given the memory limitations of a DS cartridge, it's amazing there are so many original sprites to begin with. Someone at 5th Cell must be an ornithologist, as the number of birds in the game is somewhat staggering. Amusingly enough, a number of popular Internet memes are in the game, which makes for a chuckle or two if you know what words to use. Everything is rendered in a cute cartoon style that never gets dull and the more you play the game, the more you'll appreciate what's here. You'll see a number of recycled backgrounds and background elements throughout the game, but it's all about getting through them and nabbing that Starite. If anything, the game screens actually feel too small in some cases.

For example, the vehicles are all fun to drive, but you find that you're out of road just as (or in some cases before) things get rolling. It would be cool to have some sort of racing game or goofy arcade shooter using the art from this game, but more on that idea below. I lkied that the programmers put themselves into the game (watch the credits for a laugh and experiment with the word “Teleporter”). As for the sound design, the music is great stuff and the sounds simple but fitting. This isn't the type of game where you need voice acting mucking up the works, so it's good that there's none in the game. Human characters might let out a curious “Hmmm?” or other noise when surprised or interested in something, but that's all you'll get.

Some players might complain that the game doesn't force you to be creative enough in solving its puzzles. However, that's actually more the fault of players too lazy to to use new words more than the game being badly programmed. Sure you can use the same objects over and over to clear many stages in the game, but it's you as the player limiting yourself rather than bad game design. In actuality, by retrying puzzles, you're forced to come up with new words as solutions, which works fine until you discover one very exploitable bug that allows you to use the same item over and over. Again, smarter players probably won't exploit the game's flaws as much, but the fact that the game can be so easily stripped of much of its energetic design is indeed a weak point that needs to be addressed in future installments.

As fun as it is playing this on the DS, I'm thinking 5th Cell should have brought the game over to the Wii, using the additional memory to beef up the game's difficulty so players were forced to use new words each time. This would probably have benefited the game dictionary as well. Imagine being able to upload new words (within the game guidelines, naturally) and post online level challenges that had players trying to guess their way through your maps using a set number of attempts or having larger game screens to interact with. While playing through a few differently themed levels, it hit me that a great follow-up game would be some sort of “ultimate sandbox” edition where players could create entire levels, place characters and interactive objects, press a button, then sit back and watch the fun. That, or a game that's basically a virtual world builder that allows for infinite variety in gameplay and level design, much like a more literate 2D LittleBigPlanet.

Although the game does a mostly stellar job at getting you to improve your word power, it's the lack of a bigger internal dictionary that knocks the fun down a tiny bit in the end. Again, it's more the fault of the DS hardware limitations and unless any potential sequel uses an even larger (and perhaps external cart or SD card) memory, it's going to be tricky making a better (i.e. wordier) follow up that improves on what's here. Then again, I'm over-thinking this review, really. The amount of pure fun to be had here is limitless. Scribblenauts gets your grey matter tingling and your fingers dancing in a near-perfect rhythm very few games can match. Absolutely don't miss it (yes, it's worth buying a DS or DSi for, folks) and please do type in “Game of the Year” to see what happens...

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