GENRE
	Puzzle
	DEVELOPER
	5th Cell
	PUBLISHER
	WB Games
	LOCAL WIRELESS MULTI-PLAY
	Yes
	Wi-Fi/GLOBAL ONLINE MULTI-PLAY
	No
	MICROPHONE
	No
	BUY NOW AT

Nintendojo was provided a copy of this game for review by a third party, though that does not affect our recommendation. For every review, Nintendojo uses a standard scoring criteria.

Only a few seconds are needed to fall in love with Scribblenauts, as the throngs of fans at E3 2009 proved. Demonstrations that weren't meant to be more than a few minutes were stretched as long as possible so that folks could try to stump the game by requesting outlandish combinations of monsters, items and people, either just for fun or in a high concept attempt to solve a puzzle. In longer sessions, Scribblenauts still fulfills that imagination-spurring desire, but its gameplay and control flaws may drive people to shut their DSs much quicker than developer 5th Cell had hoped.

Many players may not even get past the title screen-- but that's likely because it provides limitless, entertaining sandbox possibilities that are immediately captivating. Before even selecting a save file, gamers can engage in the magical part of Scribblenauts, that is summoning whatever items, buildings, vehicles, people and creatures desired, with no objectives other than to see how they all interact. Summon a unicorn and a princess, and the princess will hop on the unicorn and ride it around the landscape. In an idea from staffer Andy Hoover, you could summon a Marxist, a Capitalist and a bag of money to see who goes for the money and how the ensuing fight-to-the-death unravels. Can a werewolf beat a vampire? A vampire slayer versus a gray alien, or the entirely different martian? Is Cthulhu weaker to a blob, atheist or black hole? What does "nothing" look like? Will "time machine" do the same thing as "portal"? Witch versus wizard? How about taking the wizard's magic wand and turning it on others? Will a wolf versus a cow produce a yummy steak? What if another cow eats that steak? And this is all before summoning silly bits of costumery and props, such as hats, tools, weapons, skimpy lingerie-- all of which can be equipped on the game player's character or other monsters and humans. So long as the word isn't raunchy, racist or a modern celebrity or figure's name (Ronald Reagan or Paris Hilton won't do anything, but Abe Lincoln and Hercules will), and there's enough "ink" left in the on-screen meter (replenished by dragging summoned things into a trash can), it's summon-able. There are even a few jokes to try out-- keyboard cat, lol wut, longcat, "innovation" and virgin (as compared to "gamer") are all worth a try.

Yet then you get into the puzzles of the game. There's no story threaded through the single player "challenge mode"-- just a kid named Maxwell with an awesome hat (and who can be swapped out with a few other unlockable avatars, given enough in-game currency) trying to get a "starite" in every level across the game's ten worlds. And just as there's no skimping in the over 20,000 summon-able items, there's no skimping on puzzles, either: each world (which must be unlocked via earned game currency) has 11 "puzzle" and 11 "action" stages, totaling 220 stages overall. At the start of an environment-themed world (urban, ancient, spooky, etc.), only the first puzzle and action stages are unlocked. Complete one puzzle or action stage, and three more of the world's action or puzzle stages are respectively unlocked. Complete three stages of either type to unlock all of a world's puzzle or action stages.

The difference between a puzzle and action stage is that puzzle stages' starites must be earned by satisfying some requirement (like feeding an animal or breaking out of a prison), whereas action stages' starites are always in plain view and require overcoming hostile people, animals, and/or environmental obstacles along the path. Ideally, the earlier stages should be easy and then progressively difficult as the gamer goes on. However, very poor gameplay can make even the earliest stages a stylus-snapping threat. 5th Cell tries to keep things simple by using a predominantly touch-screen centric control scheme. Tap an area on the screen, and Maxwell will run to it. Tap an object to pick it up, or tap-and-drag it to a new location without removing the stylus. Maxwell can also pick up items if they're tapped and he's within range. The in-game camera prefers to stay focused on Maxwell, but the DS's d-pad can be pressed to scroll through the entire stage environment; after a long enough pause the camera will recenter on Maxwell.

That all sounds great on paper, but in this execution it's repeatedly frustrating. Some items are small, and some (such as ladders) have see-through holes in them. If the stylus is not pixel-perfectly tapped on an item, the game may register that as a request to move Maxwell, and Maxwell will sprint without pause to that spot, even if it's over a cliff into molten lava. The option to control Maxwell via the d-pad would have gone a long way. Then, other non-playable animals and people may end up standing in front of an object that falls behind them, making the object near impossible to pick up unless the gamer wants to waste ink and level-par-depleting monsters or bait to get the person out of the way. Even the simple task of giving a person or animal something they want is repeatedly frustrating because tapping the person or animal usually doesn't produce a "give" option in the pop-up context menu, and just dropping the item in front of the recipient may or may not catch their attention. Further, unpredictable physics may inadvertently destroy an item-- or worse yet, the level's starite-- causing far too much trial and error. Perhaps you want to drop a basket to pick up a flower-- that basket may end up crushing the irreplaceable flower, causing the level to end. Due to the endless variations of how objects may or may not interact results in the gamer never getting used to Scribblenauts' inconsistent take on basic interactions and physics.

Then, the actual objects themselves prove difficult to summon as expected. There are frequently gaps Maxwell or animals must traverse, but all too frequently the "plank," "bridge" or "ramp" you think would get the job done is too small. And summoning more than one doesn't create a solid structure either. Just to save one small piece of frustration: "bridge ladder" results in a lengthier bridge, but you wouldn't probably think of that or know it exists until you get to the stage that already includes one, and you click on it in "examine" mode to find out what on Earth it's named. Speaking of size: the game's dictionary doesn't consistently deal with that, either. "Big boulder" produces a small, standard boulder the same size as just "boulder", but "huge boulder" does create a gigantic boulder. Yet "big" or "huge" before "ice block" doesn't make a large ice block; instead, the gamer must type in "ice block huge", reversing the order of adjectives and nouns that the game accepts.

The puzzles themselves are also maddeningly obtuse at times. Gamers can easily fall into a trap of summoning the same few items to overcome most things-- guns, wings, black holes, superheroes and the monster of their choice-- and then reach a level so abstract that none of those items will get the job done. Provided the gamer solved an earlier stage in the world, he can skip the hard one to try another, but if that's the first puzzle or action stage in a game world, then it's time to cheat with the Internet, or, worse yet, the awful handcuffs-vending machine hack (which works only in action stages and where the starite isn't enclosed in a block of ice or water, mind you). This isn't what the game's designers intended, of course, as cryptic, short sentence "hints" are given at the start of every stage, but even those are often more pointless than helpful. If the gamer could have engaged a currency-requiring roulette machine that could produce an item that would be part of a guaranteed solution, the gamer could at least be taught how to be more creative and proceed through a level without feeling entirely imagination-deprived.

Beyond spending the game's "ollars," which are earned by completing puzzle and action stages, on unlocking additional worlds in challenge mode, a gamer can also purchase different avatars to swap Maxwell out with in the game. The game's songs can also be purchased for listening to outside the challenge mode. The interface for this shopping is a bit poor in design, however, as the gamer can't preview what an avatar looks like without exiting the store and summoning it on the title screen or in a game level, and the songs don't offer audio previews or even descriptive titles beyond "Track4". Regardless, both songs and avatars are split into gradually higher tiers of pricing, clearly set by some arbitrary value the game designers came up with-- why a Ninja avatar is cheaper than a Shaman avatar, or Track3 is cheaper than Track17, is inexplicable.

Those aren't the only extras in the game, though. A gamer can also create her own levels using a preset chunk of terrain and then planting buildings, obstacles, creatures and tools along the way. One very interesting aspect of the puzzle design mode is the option to modify the psychology and behavior of any creature, monster or animal. If you want to have an elf that will immediately hop on and ride the first tiger he sees, just tap the elf and select that it will ride any tiger it sees. Of course, the tiger must also be set to not want to eat the elf when he comes close. Gamers can even trade any of their 12 created levels with another friend via Wi-Fi connectivity.

The game is not without further charms. All of the Scribblenauts' humans, creatures, items and buildings are lovingly hand-drawn in a consistent, attractive style that's a bit Monolith (Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers)-inspired and a bit all the developer's own. Most vehicles, animals, tools and monsters also have unique sound effects. While the game does register thousands of words, there is some repetition-- a "mastiff" is the same as a "mutt", for instance, but not the same as a pug or poodle-- but just as often gamers will be pleasantly surprised when two words don't produce the same thing, such as the aforementioned "alien" and "martian." All creatures are animated the same as the hero in 5th Cell's Drawn to Life: limbs are clearly attached via visible pegs, and they loosely swing like a marionette's during walking and interactions.

The game's soundtrack is definitely subject to the gamer's tastes. Heavy with synth strings, Asian flute, xylophones, gym whistles, record scratches and child-voice recordings of "hey!" and "yeah!", it's whimsical and highly reminiscent of 5th Cell's Lock's Quest. Some folks may like it fine, but others will tire of it quickly.

Evaluating Scribblenauts is difficult because, in spite of its numerous flaws, it never skimps on content to work with or play through, it encourages gamers to interact with friends and family for new ideas, and it provides one of the first (if only) titles to engage a gamer's imagination like no other. That's why, even when frustrated to no end, after some time to cool off, many will be helpless to give the game's challenges another try. Indeed, the title screen alone may be worth the price of admission, but the game's poor controls and gameplay design genuinely detract from what is otherwise an outstanding concept.

7.0/10