Scribblenauts Impresses Critics

Despite all the announcements for popular, big-budget game franchises at this year's E3, one of the most talked-about titles is a puzzle game for the Nintendo DS called Scribblenauts. In a hands-on preview, Joystiq described it thus: "The premise of the game is simple — you play as Maxwell, who must solve various puzzles to obtain Starites spread across 220 different levels. To execute the aforementioned solving, you write words to create objects in the world that your cartoonish hero can interact with. It's a simple concept that's bolstered by one astounding accomplishment from developer 5th Cell: Anything you can think of is in this game. (Yes, that. Yes, that too.)" They even presented it with a test of 10 words they wouldn't expect it to know or be able to represent, including lutefisk, stanchion, air, and internet, and the game passed with flying colors. The game will also allow players to edit and share levels. A trailer is available on the Scribblenauts website, and actual gameplay footage is posted at Nintendorks.

Comments

Impressive?

[lyinhart]

I'm not sure why there's so much buzz about this game. It's quite similar to other recent "indie" games like "World of Goo" and especially "Crayon Physics" - action puzzlers that involve using lateral thinking to build structures and get to an exit. And Scribblenauts doesn't look nearly as impressive as either two of those games. Besides, all these titles have the same basic premise as good 'ol "Lemmings."

Re:Impressive?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read an interview about this game I think almost a year ago, and was pretty impressed with the scope. They went through Dictionaries and Encyclopedias to create an enormous object database. There are a lot of nouns in the English language.

To list them all and give them a single attribute is quite a lot. To make them recognisable, animated, and to allow your character to interact with them is huge. To then define the way in which they also interact with one another is incredible. The parameters needed to be defined for this is almost astronomical.

Create an item. Can it be used by a human? An animal? In what ways? Can it be broken, climbed on, burnt, eaten, cut, fired, shattered, melted, driven, flown, guided? Some items may be able to modify it, some may not. Some in ways different than others. In what ways will this then change its appearance, function, interaction, etc.

On a side note... It would be nice to see such a database shared among developers. It seems like a lot of time is wasted in games recreating the same types of objects and interactions.

It is very much a sandbox game. Like many have said, though, the focus is not only getting the item, but how fast you can do it, how few items you can do it with, in how many different ways you can do it, etc.

I was impressed with the idea when first learning of it, but wasn't sure how well it could turn out. Fun, but very basic and limited, I thought. I'm amazed how well it has come out. I haven't bought a game in years, and rarely pay full price for a game, or buy them new... but this one seems to be getting more and more interesting. I'm really looking forward to see how this turns out.

Reminds me of concepts from SF

[bughunter]

Scribblenauts reminds me of things like the Fantasy Game from Ender's Game, and the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer; a Propædeutic Enchiridion in which is told the tale of Princess Nell and her various friends, kin, associates, &c. from Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.