Scribblenauts a name to note for the DS this fall
Nintendo DS owners looking for something different might want to jot the name Scribblenauts down, as the latest game from 5TH Cell looks set to provide a completely unique experience when it releases this fall.
It's a stretch to call Scribblenauts an adventure... or anything else for that matter. Its own developers categorize it as simply "emergent", emphasizing the primary importance of player imagination in order to succeed. In Scribblenauts, players must guide the main character Maxwell through ten simple hand-drawn worlds , each with eleven puzzle levels and eleven action levels, in order to collect a "Starite". What separates the game from other traditional puzzle or platforming games, however, is that progress is made by thinking of "any person, place or thing" and noting that word on the touchscreen, which calls it into existence. As described on its website, "Want a birthday cake? How about some Dynamite? Bring that Fairy Princess alive and watch a Dragon chase her across the screen. Every object behaves as it would in the real (or fantastical) world, and you can combine objects together to create completely new behaviors."
With shades of text adventures of old, this approach to puzzle-solving in an individual way promises a high degree of replayability, as puzzles can reportedly be solved in "dozens of completely unique ways". Experimentation is encouraged, and the developers boast that "objects you write down in the game are only limited by your imagination." It remains to be seen how robust this system is in practice, but it's nevertheless caught our attention, and we'll be keeping an eye on Scribblenauts in the months leading up to its release.
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