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Scribblenauts: Reviews

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Game Score: 9/10

Scribblenauts is another classic example of DS ingenuity and innovative gameplay. However, it's also victim to the drawbacks of its platform: low graphic and sound quality. Aside from the obvious DS related flaws, Scribblenauts is a revolutionary game that'll entertain for hours.

In the game, you play the role of Maxwell who, for whatever reason, must traverse his side-scrolling world in the pursuit of ‘starites’. Each level has the same objective: collect the starite. There are two types of levels, puzzle and action. In the puzzle levels, Maxwell will have to interact with the people and/or animals present in order for the starite to appear, while in the action levels, he must simply reach the starite by unlocking doors, digging, flying, etc ... How you do this, however, is what gives this game a unique and interesting appeal.

Scribblenauts is a vocabulary testing puzzle game where you must ‘summon’ objects to aid you in your starite collecting quest. Maxwell can walk, jump, swim, you know, the normal stuff, but his greatest attribute is interaction with the objects that you conjure up for him. Maxwell can climb ladders, fly planes, go fishing, dig holes, shoot guns, anything you can think of really, so long as you provide him with the object to do so. The game features an impressive vocabulary so each level can be passed a variety of ways – in fact, for an extra challenge, you can try completing each level three times without using the same object twice to be awarded a gold star. The mechanics of the game are quite simple: write the name of a noun and said noun appears for you to control. The game on the other hand, is not so simple: the sheer multitude of possibilities can leave on stumped as to what to do. It’s hard to think of what you need when you aren’t given any options, just complete freedom. That’s what makes the game so inconspicuously difficult.

The graphics use simple shapes and bright colours, so it may not seem so appealing to anyone over the age of 5, but putting that aside, the cutesy-ness relates well to the gameplay and the overall theme of the game. It hasn’t got the ground breaking level designs and near-immaculate realism like many modern games on the rival handheld, the PSP, but it has a quirky nature and a novel gameplay system that combines to create a truly unique and positive gaming experience. Sure, you’ll get frustrated wracking your brain for objects you can use, sure you’ll be furious with your spelling (thank goodness for the inbuilt spellchecker), but you’ll have doing it. It’s one of those games that’s light enough to enjoy casually, yet addictive and engaging enough that you’ll keep coming back and trying to figure out just what items you can use to reach that starite.