Scribblenauts, a wonderfully imaginative puzzle game for the DS that will clock your creative muscle into overtime.

User Rating: 8 | Scribblenauts DS
By StaticPenguin | Review Date:
In Scribblenauts, your goal is to help young Maxwell in his quest to obtain the starites. In doing so, you'll really find your imagination going to all sorts of new places. Scribblenauts provides you with a very diverse array of puzzles and they can all be solved in numerous ways. There are a plethora of words in Scribblenauts and while there are some of the more… Risqué and humorous words missing, you'll be stunned at the possibilities you have at your hands. You can make ninja's fighting pirates, UFO's that can abduct cows, Cthulu, Pegasus, a goat eating Chupacabra and hell, you can even make god. The amount of items and animals that you can create and all act realistically is absolutely ridiculous. Those of you who really want to delve into the amount of things you can create, just try typing in certain cryptids or internet memes. Outside of being able to create a ton objects, there's a rather strong level editor. The level editor allows you to use the environments from levels that you've created. You can add whatever items wherever you want and even change the nature of the animals you put in it. Then, after all is said and done, you can share your levels with your friends.

There are 200 levels that are split between action and puzzle. Action will make players solve the puzzles by creating a way to get the starite that's place within the level, while puzzle will give the players a hint at what their objective is, and will spawn the starite upon meeting the requirements for that level. It could range from giving Santa something he doesn't have, to moving a cow and a butcher out the way so Maxwell can clear the traffic jam. The levels can at times be deceptively easy or vice versa but that doesn't stop you from creating some of the most bizarre scenarios. Upon completing a level, you are given "ollars". Ollars are determined by the amount of points you earn for completing a level by using a certain number of items, style and how fast you complete the level. You can spend Ollars on locked challenge areas, avatars or songs. If you'd like to go back for a bigger challenge, you can select any level you've previously completed for the advanced challenge, where you need to solve the puzzle or obtain the starite in 3 different ways to earn a gold star for that challenge.

The only issue with the game is that the items don't always seem to register your touch. Maxwell will move where ever you touch the screen and since you also move items by touching them and dragging them, this will often result in some complications. Maxwell may move to the location of the item you were trying to touch and maybe to his own demise, forcing you to restart the challenge. It's too easy to move Maxwell into harm's way or he'll get stuck between objects. Some of the objectives in the 200 plus levels aren't always the clearest of the bunch, and there comes a time during the gameplay when the graphics will smear together or the game itself will slow down if you put too many things on the screen.

Bottom line, Scribblenauts is a blast. It's fun and will certainly make you think. It'll keep people coming back to complete advanced challenges and create a plethora of different scenarios. There are a few problems that mostly lie in the controls but they're easily overlooked. If you own a DS(I) and you don't own Scribblenauts, I have but one question for you. Why not?

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