I have a fondness for the Scribblenauts series. Super Scribblenauts took up so many hours of my childhood, mostly spent equipping every possible piece of gold clothing before taking on an “invincible dragon” or something else of that sort, and I thought Scribblenauts Unlimited was a great evolution of the formula. However, until now, I’ve never played more than a few levels of the original game.
The original Scribblenauts introduces the ability for the player to spawn anything they can think of into the world, but the devs had some trouble gamifying this concept on their first go. The game is rough around the edges, but has enough charm to still be worth playing today.
Remember, this review reflects my experience and therefore everyone else’s as well. If you disagree with any point I bring in this post, then you should reflect on your opinion until you agree with me as I am correct and you are wrong. Thank you for reading!
Gameplay
As a quick summary, Scribblenauts is a game in which whatever you type appears in the game! Now there are some limits to this: you can’t do copyrighted objects nor immaterial ideas such as ‘happiness’, but most things you think up can be created in the game, often with a unique sprite!
This concept by itself goes a long way. Just messing around in the freeplay mode making whatever you like is probably the best part of the game. But, I’m more interested in talking about the levels that were built around this concept.
This game contains a whopping 220 levels! Each of the 10 worlds has 11 “puzzle” levels and 11 “action” levels. They are completely different, except for that they are effectively exactly the same. Let me explain:
The goal of every level is to get Maxwell to the starite. How that is done is different between the 2 level types.
- In action levels, the starite is sitting somewhere in the stage, the player just has to use whatever words are at their disposal to reach it.
- Puzzle levels on the other hand start out with the starite nowhere to be found. The player must read the prompt of the level and meet a condition to make the starite appear.
Got it? Well, the problem is that there are lots of action levels where the starite is hidden behind an immovable door. How do you open the door? You must meet a condition based on the prompt of course! This effectively makes the level a puzzle level. Also, there are puzzle levels where the condition is “get Maxwell to this point” which is effectively the same as a basic action level. This is not a big deal, but I thought it was funny how interchangeable the level types were.
Problems
In general, the levels are not that good. Most of them are very brief taking only a few seconds to complete, which is preferable to the never-ending levels overflowing with monsters. It feels to me that the developers had trouble thinking of appealing ways to get the player creative with their word choices. There is usually no in-game motivation to use new words when you’ve already found an overpowered solution to some problem. Why would you bother to spawn a cyclops to kill a monster when yet another black hole is sure to do the trick? 90% of this game can be beaten with “pegasus” and “black hole”.
The other major problem is the controls. You direct Maxwell to move with stylus, but you also move objects you’ve spawned with the stylus. So, if you spawn a thin object like a rope and accidentally miss its collision area with the stylus, Maxwell will take that as an order to run towards wherever you tapped, often resulting in his quick death, forcing you to start the level over.
The problems don’t end here: Getting an NPC in and out of a vehicle is way too hard and when moving the camera, it pans back to Maxwell way too quickly. Stuff like this gets really frustrating.
While the gameplay is not perfect, it is not as bad as I have implied. It’s fun to spawn whatever and there are good puzzles scattered among the bad. Plus, this game is oozing with charm. Discovering stuff like the time machine and teleporter are great additions that make the game that much more fun. And in what other game can you murder the devs?
Score
Even though most of the levels are dead simple and despite the frustrating controls, Scribblenauts offers a unique experience thanks to its core mechanic. I’m glad that a sequel ended up being created which solved many of the issues I had with this game. All hail Ceiling Cat!
Score: 8/15
An Uncreative Guide To Beating Scribblenauts
So let me get this straight: you are playing a game all about creativity. Moreover, it is a game which isn’t very good when you take out the creative potential. You are playing this game and wish to push through it efficiently with as little creative thought as possible. What you want to do is defeat the purpose of the game! You, my beloved reader, have come to the right place.
Scribblenauts makes you face the same few obstacles over and over between levels. So, when you face one of these obstacles (such as needing to defeat a monster, or push a button remotely), you can just find that problem on the list below and spawn the corresponding object to make quick work of the puzzle. No need for that gross creative problem solving here.
| Obstacle | Objects | Reasoning |
| Need to fly? | Pegasus | Wings and Jetpack run out of fuel, but pegasus flies forever. May not fit in every gap, but best all-around choice |
| Need to dig? | Hoe | Not many objects can dig in this game. The most obvious is “shovel”, but “hoe” is far shorter saving light years of time |
| Need to defeat an enemy? | Black Hole | ‘Nuff said |
| Need to destroy an object? | Black Hole | If it can be destroyed, the black hole will destroy it |
| Need to swim underwater? | Scuba | The shortest-spelled option for the job |
| Need to pull an NPC, large item, or creature? | Rope/Cord | Cord is shorter and won’t get stuck as easily, but rope is better for bigger objects |
| Need to move an NPC, large item, or creature remotely? | Air Vent | Among the strongest forces in the Scribblenauts universe is wind |
| Need to melt ice? | Fireball | Like a fire, but without that pesky wood getting in the way |
| Need to put out a fire? | Ice Block | More consistent than “water” and can easily be reused for multiple fires and for pressing buttons |
| Need to light up a dark level? | Sun | Completely trivializes every dark level. Just place like 5 of them around the screen and you’ll be good. |
| Need to cover a large gap? | Bridge Ladder | What is a bridge ladder? I don’t really know, but it’s in the game and is way quicker than gluing two beams together, so you’re welcome. |
| Need to push a button remotely? | Rock | Good old rock. Nothing beats that |