Review – Scribblenauts

THE promise of a game that allows you to create anything you want sounds far too ambitious to be real, especially for a Nintendo DS game, but somehow Scribblenauts manages to contain an incredibly impressive library of objects, from UFOs and pearl tea to giant squids and zombies, that you can use in virtually any way you’d like.

There are a few understandable limitations though, so you can’t create anything alcoholic, suggestive or copyrighted. Another limitation ensures that you can only create a certain number of items per level so that your poor little DS doesn’t have a meltdown. 

Fortunately it’s a generous limit and you can delete any objects you make so you can replace them with a new one. Aside from that, the only limit is your imagination. The aim of each of the 200-plus levels is to collect a golden star, called a Starite, by any means necessary. 

Half of the levels are action focused, which means the player can see the Starite and must find a way to reach it. For example in one level the Starite is at the bottom of a pitch black, shark infested bay, so my solution was to put on scuba diving gear and use a giant squid to take out my enemies while using the sun to light up my path. Of course a simpler solution could be to make a submarine and use it torpedoes on the sharks, or dropping a toaster in the water to shock them to death.

The other half of the levels are the puzzle focused ones, which means you must solve a problem to make the Starite appear. As an example one puzzle asks the player to revive a monster, so I chose to drop an electric eel on it, but you could try hooking it up to a defibrillator or even shooting it with a stun gun.

Though the action levels can be fun in an silly platforming game sort of way, solving the puzzles stages with random objects is usually more challenging, fun and rewarding. That’s because you can solve 90% of the action levels with a lasoo, a jetpack and the occasional giant squid (or kraken if you will). Sure, you can decide to not reuse objects, and there's even an advanced mode that doesn't let you create previously used used ones, but the rewards for trying new things just aren't substantial enough.

The in-game currency of Ollars is given to the player after each puzzle so they can unlock new areas, and you’ll gain more by using a different objects and trying new things. Of course, this is supposed to be an incentive to be creative, but by the end of the game I’d bought every level and still had tons of Ollars left over, so trying new ideas was more for fun than for any real gain in the game.

Rewards aside, by far the biggest flaw in Scribblenauts is its controls. The reliance on the stylus to handle both object placement and character movement is completely baffling and is the games biggest weakness. A misplaced tap on the touch screen can cause you to accidentally pick up an object, undoing your hard work, or make your on-screen avatar come running, often to his demise. It’s not a game-breaking problem, but it will be the cause of much frustration for some gamers, and did make me want to snap my DS in half on more than one occasion.

Scribblenauts is the type of game that will give back as much as you put in. You can choose to solve every puzzle in a different way, but eventually if things don’t work out the way you want you’ll fall probably back on your tried-and-true methods to get you on to the next level. That said, the puzzle levels are often quite clever and when everything goes according to plan Scribblenauts is a very impressive game.

It may not be perfect, but Scribblenauts is a unique game that is definitely worth your time and money.

GRADE: B

Available on the Nintendo DS. Every level completed, and a few were replayed for extra Ollars. Review guidelines