Aug 07 2009
Brainstorming ways to succeed in Scribblenauts
5th Cell is finishing up development on a charming, innovative and ambitious project called Scribblenauts, and the critically-acclaimed title will reach shelves this September, exclusively for Nintendo DS.
The first level in the game tasks players with getting a star piece out from the top of a tree as Maxwell, the game’s main character.
The lure of Scribblenauts is the number of creative ways players can succeed, and the imagination it will take to find various solutions to each level. Let’s brainstorm a few for the tree level.
What you do is type in an object and the game will match it up with an index of more than 10,000 objects. From bowling balls to unicorns, zombies and cannons, you type it in, and the object will appear.
At E3, gamers spent most of their time having unlikely characters do battle by summoning the undead, God, sea monsters and more. But the depth of the game should come from replaying the same levels without using the same items twice.
So, back to the tree. The easiest options for getting the star piece are to summon a ladder to climb the tree or an axe to cut it down.
But what else? The challenge is to go beyond that. Summon stilts and walk over to it. Anything to lift Maxwell up should work. Type in escalator.
It’s rumored that a secret mode won’t let you reuse items throughout the entire game, not just in each level. If that’s the case, you may need to be even more creative. What happens if you summon a cliff and a hang glider and attempt to soar over to the star. How about building a ramp and hopping on a dirtbike. You might even be able to summon a cowboy hat, chaps, spurs, a horse, a saddle and a lasso. Yeehaw!
The developers have tried to give basic properties to each object in the game so that they can be interacted with in a way that one might expect. Bounce off a trampoline into the tree. Hop on a pogo stick.
I wonder if you could put chewing gum on the end of a whip and pull the star down that way? The puzzles and levels will get more and more complex, so the chance to exercise your imagination will only grow exponentially as the game progresses. This is sand-box gaming in its purest form and anyone with an active imagination should keep this game in mind.
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