July 13th, 2009

Scribblenauts a Charming Experience

On June this year at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, Scribblenauts was the most favored game, charming everybody present there. In fact it was such a sensation that it managed to beat even the heavy ones such as “Splinter Cel: Conviction” and “God of War II”. Even the ones familiar with Scribblenauts will notice that actually this game is a combination of platformer and puzzle game and its way of playing is quite special. On the touch screen you write the words with the help of a stylus, after that the thing you have written appears in front of your eyes. Than some puzzles are offered to you and you need to use objects to help solving the puzzles.

The system in the game will not recognize names, shapes, root words or places, or vulgar content as well as the stuff that is copyrighted. You are limited to the number of objects you are allowed to place in a level, since every object is supposed to take only a certain amount of the onscreen memory bar. Deleting an item and start again is enabled by the “drag and drop into a bin” feature. The two types of level present in the game – platform and puzzle – carry you through missions represented by linear point-to-point levels having some obstacles into the equation. In order to complete the missions you must find an item in a shape of a star, called “starite” which is positioned at the end of the level. The levels for the puzzle type have a hint to offer and the moment you solve the puzzle you can win a “starite”. Per total there are 220 levels that you cross along 10 worlds at the same time you are able to unlock them if you gain some currency called: ollars. Every level fulfilled brings you ollars in case you completed a stage under the fixed time, and you can earn also accomplishments when you utilize new objects without using weapons.

In a stage where a starite is atop of a tree you can use different items to get to it such as a ladder or termites that devour the tree, but also you can replace these items adding two acrobats to reach the starite. Three levels of difficulty are present in each stage and because every item is singular in usage you have to wear sometimes the thinking cap in order to figure out some creative ways to defeat each level. You are allowed to create new levels thanks to the level editor available, you have also the possibility to drop AI characters in your level and change their behavior, you can add objects, save your levels and share them with your pals using Wi-Fi or online features. Creating new levels could be done only for the platform stage but hopefully it could be possibly done also with the puzzle based one.

The visuals of the game render a correct representation of everything that it is drawn and therefore can be easily recognized even if the screen presents a low-resolution. Scribblenauts is a charming experience and surprisingly different from what you have expected.