My job advisor told me to become an astronaut, well jokes on them, I became a scribblenaut and I regret my decision immensely.
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“Scribblenauts” was released for the Nintendo DS almost worldwide in 2009, in Japan in 2011. The game was developed by 5th Cell, best known for the “Scribblenauts” and “Drawn to Life” series of games.
“Scribblenauts” was published by Warner Bros. Interactive who has published multiple games like the Batman Arkham games. Konami published “Scribblenauts” in Japan, who has developed iconic game franchises like “Castlevania,” “Contra,” and more.
I played "Scribblenauts” back in 2011 or 2012, although this isn’t a retrospective because I never beat it as a kid, nor do I have any memories with the game. Seriously, I forgot I even had it until browsing my old DS games. I also started this review in 2021, but it ended up in my backlog, so here it is now.
Novel Concept
"Scribblenauts" has its first dose of gameplay as soon as the game starts. The title screen is a sandbox for the player to mess around in. Let me tell you...
It's easy to become corrupt with power instantly. Corruption aside, "Scribblenauts" has a brilliant concept. The player uses a search engine by typing with the touch screen to spawn things.
The catalogue of things is massive. Dinosaurs, vehicles, weapons, clothes, and many more are available to spawn.
They even have the Keyboard Cat in the game! I mean it led to a lawsuit, but he’s in the game!
Words can be typed like on a phone or each letter can be individually drawn. For solving puzzles, the most useful items are the:
Jet Pack
Island
Rope
Large Air Vent
Ooze
The Jetpack gives vertical versatility. The island acts as a platform that never tips over but can go through floors to fall into the abyss sometimes. I don't think the island graduated solid matter college.
Rope attaches to things from two points, such as an NPC to a helicopter to easily take an NPC somewhere. Now whether that's ethical or not is a different matter altogether. Large Air Vents push things away from them or upwards, which makes for quick ease of some obstacles.
The Ooze, the most powerful enemy in the game, is small but is near indestructible. Dragons, Krakens... All succumb to the Ooze. The Ooze is all.
The game also stores the four most recently used words for quick access, so they don't always have to be retyped.
The game's creativity with its mechanics is matched with its cartoony visuals. The visuals, while rough around the edges, since it's a DS game, look nice.
[Ripped/Posted by: JCP-JohnCarlo]
The mechanics are used beautifully to solve puzzle and action levels. Puzzles require spawning the right things to spawn to solve a puzzle, while action levels require using things to get to the Starite.
Each level is about grabbing the Starite. It's unknown why Maxwell needs it since there's no story explained in-game, but they're shiny, so that's all that matters.
Every level begins with a camera pan to points of interest and with a hint. Most of the time hints are helpful, but the developers do bamboozle you with them. In one case, they discuss philosophy... Wait, what?
Level 10-9 goes... Surprisingly deep for a kid's game.
Each level has a meter limit, which refuses to spawn anything else when full. There is also par, which gives a higher score the less things the player spawns. Spawned things can be removed by being dragged to the trash bin.
However, the meter limit was never an obstacle. I never came close to it getting full.
The player receives a score at the end of each level, the higher the score, the more Ollars they get. Ollars are mainly used to unlock other worlds in any order, but it’s best to go in the numbered order to not face any difficulty spikes both figuratively and literally.
Beating levels as quickly as possible, getting the lowest par, and defeating levels in style will net higher amounts of Ollars. Ollars can also be spent on music tracks and avatars for the player.
The Avatars are a cool addition, even if there are too few of them. The music tracks however... It’s best to not bother. It's not so much that the soundtrack is horrible, it's just that most songs sound identical to each other. Nothing stands out to me.
Merits are also a thing, where while they don't seem to increase scores, they do act as an achievement system. Merits are unlocked by doing things such as spawning two of an item/NPC type, not attacking anything or everything, and more.
There's even a merit for resurrecting a corpse, since it isn't a kid's game without necromancy.
Touch Screen Blues
"Scribblenauts" uses the touch screen for most of its controls: moving Maxwell, placing objects, typing out objects, menus, etc.. The camera and pause screen are the only exceptions.
Look, I love the Nintendo DS, it was a big part of my childhood. I also love the Nintendo DS touchscreen... However, a 2D game like "Scribblenauts" almost purely controlled with the touch screen controls stylus is one of the worst control schemes for a video game I've ever seen in my life.
Firstly, Maxwell's movement is unreliable. Sometimes when you tap the screen for Maxwell to go somewhere, he'll overshoot or undershoot where you want him to go. This isn't too bad until the game adds lava pits, where overshooting means death.
Secondly, the jumping is done automatically when Maxwell goes over holes... Sometimes! Maxwell will sometimes not jump when you want him to, or even jump when you just want to go down a hole. Even then, the jump itself is tiny so the jetpack becomes essential.
Thirdly, the camera. When you move the camera around and don't move it for a tiny bit, it'll snap back to Maxwell. This doesn't seem too bad, but it can cause you to move Maxwell accidentally or pick up something you didn't mean to do when you meant to do something else, which is extremely frustrating.
You want to know why some pictures in this review have some blur? It's because of the camera! When I tried to take pictures, it would always snapback, making it one of the worst experiences I ever had screenshotting a game.
Fourthly, in general it's easy to do stuff you don't mean to do. For example, if you want to select a police officer to move them, you might just grab his gun. This is a huge pain when time is of the essence.
The worst of it is with the Island, which is already finicky since it can go through the floor, add a janky hitbox, and you have a recipe for a bunch of game overs when you try to use it as a platform only to select the Island and cause Maxwell to fall.
I won't deny some stuff was my fault, but so many times the game just didn't cooperate with me despite using its own logic. It's hard to be precise, resulting in some levels having easy solutions in theory, but are aggravatingly hard to pull off in execution.
The control scheme ruins the game for me. In most levels the controls frustrated me or resulted in me dying for the game's faults. It got to the point where minor and rare things like NPCs not moving when you don't want them to were massive annoyances.
Not as rare, but also how the game sends the player back to the level selection screen when beating each level instead of providing the choice to move on to the next level. It's not a big deal, but it does disrupt the flow of the game.
Also, the icing on top, while the music on its own is meh, it becomes a repetitive mess when every song sounds so similar and when you get stuck on the same level repeatedly. I'm so sick of hearing the intro and victory themes especially.
Dig for Gold
Onto... More positive things. By replaying a level after beating, players can enter Challenge Mode. Challenge Mode gives a gold star in the level's Starite icon.
Challenge Mode levels are beaten by completing the level three times in a row, with a different solution each time. For example, if a police officer is given a donut in the first try of a level, a donut cannot be spawned in the second and third tries.
It's a neat addition, but there are loopholes to exploit. A rope can be used in one try, but then in the second try you can use the "big rope," which is the same size as a regular rope.
This doesn't work with everything, but it's easy to break some levels in Challenge Mode with this. It ends up being more of a challenge for how to break the game more than anything in my experience.
Challenge Mode in itself, while flawed, does seem like it could be a fun time. Unfortunately, it's in "Scribblenauts" for the Nintendo DS, so the control scheme holds it back.
Not that the reward is worth it, completing Challenge Mode nets an Avatar of Maxwell's beta design.
You know, beta designs never leave their beta stage for a reason. I personally don't like it and I don't find it's worth going through Challenge Mode for it.
Finally, players can create and edit their own levels. The par limit, music, hint, and so on can be customized. Levels are built with the landscape layouts of pre-existing levels.
Honestly, this is the best part of the game. Levels are fun to create, and the player's imagination can go wild. I can make a level where six Oozes protect a Starite. Who's going to stop me? The government? No one can stop the Ooze.
Overall (F)
“Scribblenauts” for the DS has an amazing foundation and a neat visual style. The series would go on to evolve as the years went by, which I'm glad it did. However, this series started off on some rough footing.
"Scribblenauts" has aggravating touch controls, annoying elements, repetitive music, and the game overs that were at fault of the game ruins the game for me. Any fun I had was short-lived. While "Scribblenauts" offers a lot to do, given there are over 200 levels, the amount of content just turns it into an endurance test due to the controls.
My only major takeaway from "Scribblenauts" is that the Ooze is powerful and almighty. Now excuse me while I pray to my new religion.
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