Scribblenauts, unlocking your vocabulary
After we got an endorsement for Scribblenauts for the DS on a recent CAVEradio episode, I figured I’d give it a chance. It was sold to me as a “you can make it anything” game, but historically speaking those require too much brain power with little pay off in the fun/action department. Scribblenauts, however, I’m happy to say finds a sweet balance…but it does make you think.
The greatest thing about Scribblenauts is it lets you be as generic or ridiculous as you want. The goal of each level is to do whatever it tells you to do, for instance, “give the dog a bone.” You then type in words and those objects then magically appear and you can do with them as you wish, each having certain interactions with other objects.
The challenges get harder as you progress but there are pretty much an infinite number of ways to solve a puzzle. Sure, you can just type in “bone” and have one appear, then give it to the dog. Done. You pass. Or you could type in “skeleton” and that will work too, after all, it is a bone. And then lets say you need to get from one side of river to the other…how do you do it?
Bridge?
Airplane?
Blimp?
Spaceship?
Human cannonball?
All of those will probably work and that’s what makes Scribblenauts fun. Take away the freedom and it just becomes another puzzle game in the vein of The Incredible Machine, but since your items/objects are pretty much infinite, you can create some really bizarre situations.
The way the game rewards you with points also keeps you creative. You’ll get bonus points for using new words, not using guns, using as few objects as possible, and other various methods of interaction. Or you can keep using a net to capture the butterfly and that will pass you too, but it’s just not as fun.
Jen and I were both playing the other night and it was a lot of fun hearing how we each approach the same problem. How do you protect a sandwich from an army of ants? I put the sandwich in a box. She put walls around it. We both win. She prefers flying on pterodactyls, I prefer a hot air balloon.
A game worth sharing
This is one of the few games you’ll want to pass around to friends while you’re playing. I can see Scribblenaut parties where you pass around the DS (or BYODS) and you each try to create the most ridiculous way to capture a simple butterfly.
I’m not sure what the limits of Scribblenauts are, as I’ve read there is some ungodly number of words in the game’s dictionary. All that I do know is that “harpoon” does not result in a Ned Land harpoon but a harpoon gun, nor does “net gun” give you a gun that shoots nets. Scribblenauts also seems to have an abundant amount of levels and challenges, which will keep you going your first time through, but considering you can always improve your interactions and use different items each time, the replay here seems really high as well.
I’m really glad Lindsey called in to the show and shared the Scribblenauts discovery because I would have otherwise written off as another cheap puzzle game a la Drawn to Life, which just didn’t hold my interest for very long. Too bad she had to suffer through the PAX Plague to find such a fun game.
Scribblenauts doesn’t require Professor Layton-esque brain power to solve each puzzle, but it will require you to think creatively, which is Layton doesn’t always offer. Lets just say you won’t have to take notes to solve a Scribblenauts puzzle, but you will have to hone up on your vocabulary because you won’t find any zombie robots in any diabolical box.
