Scribblenauts Review

Note: I have not completed this game, however with 220 puzzles to complete i think i can be excused for once


Scribblenauts is a side-scrolling puzzle game where you can solve puzzles using basically anything you can think of. Nothing rude or crude though, Believe me... I tried! The overall concept of the game really piqued my interest and made me buy it. The developers, 5th cell, are no stranger to the DS with their previous games (Drawn to life and Locks Quest) all getting relatively good reviews (apart from Drawn to life Spongebob Squarepants edition. But I’m going to steer well clear of that) I expected an amazing game with it winning Game of the show at E3 this year. You control a character called Maxwell who travels through various lands helping people with their conundrums. At least... That’s what I gathered from it as there is very little story to the game.

I really don’t know what you could call this game genre wise, Open world puzzler maybe? There is a massive open world element on the title screen where you can basically ‘summon’ any item you want. Santa with a machine gun fighting against the devil with a chainsaw? You can do that if you really wanted to. Although there is still a limit on how many items you can have on the screen which is a bit of a nuisance but I suppose it is there to keep the game running smoothly.

The graphic style is very cutesy. The cell shaded graphics seem to add to the charm of the game, while the detail on the items is fairly accurate. There isn’t that much to say about the graphics other than they do well to capture the game and the backgrounds add to the ‘atmosphere’ of the game.

The controls are where this game is seriously hindered. I can see what the developers where trying to do with them, making them easy for everyone to pick up and play the game. But it is just too temperamental and really gets on my nerves. You use the stylus to ‘summon’ and move objects. But you also use it to control your character. The problem with this is that sometimes I’ve wanted to pick up an item. But then Maxwell decided to jump to his doom into lava. The other annoying thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any precision with the controls, if you just want Maxwell to move a tiny bit, you can’t. It seems ridiculous not to map controlling Maxwell to the face buttons. Instead they chose to use the face buttons for camera controls. The camera is a fundamental part of the gameplay, but why they didn’t decide to put the character movement to the directional buttons just seems stupid.


Overall this game is REALLY addictive and despite the crappy controls, it is one of those games you have to buy. The puzzles do vary in difficulty and you can get frustrated with some of the puzzles because of the controls but I recommend this game, I give it a 4.5/5