Review: Scribblenauts

I know I should've done this review long ago, like when I obtained the game. Scribblenauts is the most original, genius and ambitious game I have ever seen in my life. The concept of the game is so simple, yet so...genius.

The whole game revolves around you punching out words spelling an object and creating them. Type in "spade" and you'll get a spade. Type in "tree" and you'll get a tree. Type in "god" and you get what-seems-to-look-like Jesus. Type in "vampire" and a vampire appears to try to kill stuff around him which will eventually spawn into mindless zombies.

There are two different kinds of levels to this game: Action and Puzzle. Action is basically trying to get from point A to point B, so I shan't dwell upon it too much. The main course of the game is the puzzle levels, which forces you to act creatively.

See, the 'rule' to this game is that your character is not superman. He can't fly, teleport or even fight much. He is only given the ability to create anything (conventional) he wants.


Every level, you will be given an objective like "Catch the butterfly" (one of my favorite earlier levels). As an added challenge, you will be given a bonus if you do it within a certain amount of 'creations'.

See, this is where you will get stumped. The butterfly is hovering well beyond your reach and you cannot jump high enough to reach it. One way to solve it is to create a 'flower' to lure the butterfly down and create a 'net' for your character to catch it. Of course, there are probably many different ways you can try solve it, just need to think creatively and out of the box (something which I'm not really good at lol).

Another cool thing about this game is the item's ability to create cause and effect. Create thermal googles and wear it, the whole place becomes heat vision view. As shown by the video below, you can kill a medusa you created, grab her head and turn living beings to stone.

You can imagine the amount of work that went through for this game. Not just work; GRUNT work. I bet the scripters are chained to their seat to script out every single possible thing they can think of and from various different dicionaries. It's quite insane when you think about it.

Here are the words available in Scribblenauts for those who wants to have a preview.

Hmm, and I still find it amusing that typing in 'gamer' and 'virgin' produces the same thing >.<