Title: Scribblenauts
Release: September 15, 2009
Genre: Puzzle
Developer: 5th Cell
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Platform: DS
Rating: E (Everyone)
Crushed under the weight of the triple “A” efforts and the blockbuster franchises was nestled a pebble of a game at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo. Scribblenauts became the little game with the grand vision; a puzzle game that allowed players to summon objects into the game world simply by scribbling its name with your DS stylus. Most attendees proclaimed Scribblenauts the best handheld game of E3 back in June of 2009. Today, the game is finally available to the masses and the proclamations seem to have turned into coughs and whispers.
You are Maxwell, the titular scribblenaut who has just graduated from the academy and must begin to…scribble stuff. The story is unclear, but the imaginative concept is served well by its upbeat presentation.The graphics help illustrate an abstract paper doll aesthetic. Any object written on screen will spring to life instantly in a strange toy version that can be interacted with depending on the context and functionality of what is written. The backgrounds are colorful while properly framing the chaos that comes with being able to summon just about any noun imaginable. The music sounds like a cross between Little Big Planet’s soundtrack and Sesame Street songs. The funky, light-hearted beats continue throughout the game’s two-hundred plus levels.
Scribblenauts presents ten worlds each filled with two sets of levels. These levels are broken into puzzle levels and action levels. Puzzle levels require the completion of a hidden objective that is only hinted at by what objects are shown on screen and a brief message at the beginning of each level. Completing the puzzle will grant you the “starite”, the one object that will officially end the level. Action levels challenge you to retrieve the “starite” through any means necessary and provide fuel for some of the crazier abominations you will find yourself creating in the game. All levels are timed and have a set par for how many objects are necessary to use in order to complete your mission. Beating a level will win you “ollars”, the game’s currency while beating a level with style, few objects and a quick time will award you bonus “ollars” which are used to buy your next world filled with new levels.
The game’s inventive and unique gameplay does begin to get repetitive after you have completed the first world; the novelty wears away revealing a typical puzzle game that suffers from more than a few mechanical issues. First of all, navigating Maxwell feels clumsy no matter how many hours you have logged playing. Movement is performed by touching the screen where you want Maxwell to go. He automatically jumps when directed near a cliff which often leads to inadvertent death plunges. Whenever he is holding an object in his hands Maxwell may end up tossing it across the stage instead of carrying it which also leads to death and frustration. Nothing in the game ever reacts smoothly one-hundred percent of the time. Weird anomalies will occur every so often that will make you second guess yourself when reusing proven methods of success.
Secondly, who decides what solutions have style? How can one solution have more style than another? What if you discover a solution that has so much style that the developers didn’t take it into account? It seems like a vague area that should not have been cemented into the overall gameplay structure. Other aspects like the timer and par system successfully spoil the spirit of what a game like Scribblenauts strives to embody. Scribblenauts is supposed to be about finding your own path to success, not being arbitrarily judged on criteria that cannot in any way be accurately measured.
Scribblenauts is an interesting take on the puzzle genre; so innovative and fresh that it probably should have been tested longer and refined to the point where it works one-hundred percent of the time. The game is a fun rent and anyone bored with conventional puzzlers should spend some quality time with Maxwell. And maybe after a few more iterations, Scribblenauts will become that amazing game from E3 2009.
M. Michael Chwedyk-MuzikReviews.com Sr. Video Game Reviewer
September 27, 2009
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