Have you ever wished you could make something magically appear before your eyes just by thinking of it? 5th Cell set out to realize that dream in their puzzle-platformer, Scribblenauts; a game which allows players to type the name of an object -- literally almost any object a brain can muster -- and it will come into existence within the game. Not only will that object then become tangible, but it also possesses unique attributes (rules) which determine how it should interact with everything else in the game. If Scribblenauts sounds too good to be true, that's because it is -- but not for the reasons you might think.
The core mechanic of summoning objects works surprisingly well and offers a virtually unlimited number of ways to complete a level's objective. With literally thousands of objects represented by tens of thousands of words (some words create the same object i.e. "chicken" and "hen") I was hard pressed to find objects that weren't accounted for by the in-game dictionary. The vastness of the library allows the game to adapt to solutions never even considered by the developer. To illustrate how truly malleable the game is, there was a level requiring me to activate a hard-to-reach button. My solution was to type "time machine", which created an actual time machine in the game, and send my avatar, Maxwell, back to the jurassic period. Once there, I hopped on a t-rex and used the time machine to return to the original level. After placing the t-rex on top of ledge with the button, I created and placed an unassuming blogger next to him. This blogger's level of enjoyment in his newfound situation was inversely proportional to the hungry t-rex's and upon seeing this beast, the blogger reacted by fleeing. Lamentably for the blogger -- and fortuitously for the me -- his evasion route was interrupted by the button I needed to press. As he was haplessly being eaten, the blogger's struggling body continued to place pressure on the button -- thusly raising the gate it controlled and allowing Maxwell to progress.
Another possibility could be to summon a set of wings, attach them to Maxwell and fly directly into the button. Or perhaps one could simply smash a wrecking ball into it. You get the idea, the possibilities are endless and the game rarely presents challenges too difficult to overcome. However Scribblenauts is less about challenge than imagination. It's fun comes from testing the game to see if it can accommodate the most outrageous solution one can envisage.
While the system of manifesting objects by typing their name does work in a surprising number of ways, it isn't perfect. It's not unusual for an item's rules to omit interactions expected in their real world counterparts. When I was playing a portion of a level that required Maxwell to get past a wall, I tried to blow the wall up by colliding matter with antimatter. Sadly, no such energetic discharge occurred. On another attempt, I made an atomic bomb shelter, stepped inside, and dropped an atomic bomb… The outcome would have probably been better if I conjured a school desk to duck and cover. Nevertheless, these missteps, even though they're frequent, are forgivable. It would be unreasonable to expect a perfectly working system which has never been attempted before.
It should come as no surprise that Scribblenauts, with its seemingly limitless possibilities for experimentation, was met a fervid anticipation and skepticism. Touted as a title with virtually unlimited solutions to each level, the concept was daring, ambitious, and seemingly doomed to failure. There was no conceivable way a small developer could pull together the incredibly massive amount of man hours required for a proper QA testing. But as the game started demoing, the press assured the public that through some miracle, all was well. As I've noted, the finished product does indeed deserve the accolades in realizing it's core mechanic better then anyone could have predicted, but it came at the expense of properly vetting the control scheme and camera, and a reward system which is antithetical to the goal of the developers.
The camera is manipulated by either the D-pad or face buttons. Oddly, it's also dictated by some peculiar game rules: after a few seconds, the view will always recenter on Maxwell and the rules concerning whether Maxwell can be moved when offscreen seemingly change on the fly. The end result is a camera that never seemed to be focused on what I want to be looking at at any particular moment.
Where this would normally be a minor annoyance, it burgeons into a near deal-breaker considering that, excluding object rotation, everything else is controlled by contextual taps of the stylus. Since Maxwell is moved by tapping the stylus on his desired destination, having the camera always recentering can lead to some frustrating outcomes as he is often sent hurtling to his death. To further compound the problem, objects are also controlled by the stylus. If the stylus tap is just off to the side of an object (something I encountered many times), Maxwell will run to that spot -- knocking down everything I carefully constructed along the way. Frustration is an understatement when the slightest screwup in input results in a huge punishment for the player or possibly even death. After so many problems in this area, I felt the game was encouraging me to abandon all the creativity and reuse a small set of items that mostly avoided these problems -- only to have my intuition further reinforced by the reward system.
In a game seemingly tailor-made for allowing the most creative 'Rube Goldberg'-esque solutions to puzzles, it's odd that the game rewards you for accomplishing puzzles in the simplest and most conventional solution. Players are awarded points, used to buy new levels, based on three criteria: shortest time, fewest objects used, and previously unused objects generated. Unfortunately, the reward for using new objects is by far the smallest of the three and is completely negated after the control scheme forces a 'retry'. A game pushing creativity should not drive players to create a solution in the fastest time possible or by the simplest method available. Thankfully, these in-game points are not in short supply, so ignoring this system does not prevent one from completing the game.
Scribblenauts was developed with tunnel vision. It's hook is so grandiose that the developers simply didn't have time to make the actual game -- and it shows. As a toy, the title is incredibly satisfying, but as a game it fails. Too many hurried and poor decisions result in an unfair and unnecessarily frustrating experience. That being said, 5th Cells' creation can still provide many hours of entertainment as long as players ignore the preset objectives. Scribblenauts' hook will delight those who enjoy tinkering while its controls will drive compeletionists to insanity.
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