There was an old MS-DOS game called Alchemy I used to really like as a kid, where you started off with three elements that you would have to combine in order to create objects. These objects could be combined with each other or the initial elements in order to make more objects. The objective of the game is to find all the combinations possible and create all of the objects. This probably sounds familiar, because this type of game has been remade multiple times on any given app store you prefer. Games like Little Alchemy or Doodle God are all clones of the original Alchemy, and their appeal is in creatively thinking about the objects given and how their definition can be stretched to be considered halves of a possible new object. For example, a car and a bird could be combined to create an airplane, because the machinery of the car and the behavior of the bird could be combined to create a flying car, aka a plane. Often, there was more than one solution to an object, such as combining a car with the air element, which would result in the same. It's silly logic mostly, but it was fun to stretch your identification of objects and their functions in order to make something new and identifiable. The issue here is that the logic isn't inherently consistent because it takes leaps of logic that are mostly fun rather than logical. Sometimes, you would have an object in mind that you knew you could get, but couldn't figure out which combination the game wanted from you, trying multiple routes that obey similar logical principles followed thus far that just, for whatever reason, wouldn't work for whatever object you were trying to create. It's the parser problem from text adventure games like Zork or riddle logic for adventure games like Day of the Tentacle, where the real issue to be overcome is in trying to think like the developer without enough context or in game logic to do so faithfully.
Scribblenauts has a solution for this that is fun, but not remotely challenging. To be fair, Scribblenauts as a series is for kids, meant to challenge your basic knowledge of things like fire defeats ice, what clothes bandits wear, or what a vampire's weakness is. It's a test of cultural knowledge, of tropes and some minor physics, accessible for nearly all ages so long as they are able to type. The fun of Scribblenauts isn't in figuring out the puzzles thrown at you since solutions are maddeningly easy, but rather in how creative you can be in coming up with solutions.
Scribblenauts Unlimited is the third in the series, and the first to be released outside of the Nintendo DS platform. The plot is nonsensical, and just gives you your primary objective: do good deeds for people who need it. This amounts to running around different levels, finding people who have an objective, and using your notebook to type in an object to spawn that will solve their problem. Sometimes, you will be required to click on a person or object and add an adjective with your notebook to change it. Like Alchemy, the game is asking you to use objects in order to solve problems, but this time looks for object types rather than specific object combinations. What this means is that if someone says they are hungry, you can pretty much feed them whatever food pops into your head, and perhaps even things that aren't so great, like a bottle of poison or rancid meat. Whatever the game thinks as edible is fair game, and generally this is where the fun is (in one memorable puzzle, I had to feed a cannibal, and so fed him another cannibal). If a character asks for a friend, you can spawn a monster that will subsequently eat them, and the puzzle is still solved. Each puzzle solved gives you a star piece, except for the multi-step puzzles that give you a full star, and the goal of the game is to collect 60 stars a la Super Mario 64.
Stressing your creative muscle is fun to do because of the wealth of objects supported in the game, but because it is aimed at kids and because of the horror that is copyright law, the hidden list of objects is limited by things that are relatively G-rated and not referencing anything specifically pop culture related. There was one objective I ran into where a nerd was asking for something related to his cartoons, and I eagerly typed in Goku, thinking at the very least the game would throw in a generic anime character analogue to solve the objective, which would have amused me. Neither happened, and typing in anime simply spawned a DVD that didn't solve the objective anyway. (I eventually solved it by spawning a cartoonist, which was a boring answer to me). Obviously, trying to spawn things like marijuana or porn magazines are not allowed, but chainsaws, guns, and other such things are kosher. After awhile, when my creativity began to wane, I resigned myself to trying to solve as many objectives with a chainsaw as possible, of which I was able to solve quite a few. Part of the reason for this waning of creativity was because the objectives felt like they had very little wiggle room at least 50% of the time. There was an objective where you had to make yourself into a superhero by completing three sub-objectives. The first was to cover your face, so I chose a gasmask. The second was to give yourself a proper costume, which I attempted with a trench coat (wanting to make the edgiest super hero ever), but the parser seemed to want tights or cape, so I settled on cape. Lastly, I was to give myself a super power, and I was stumped. I needed to click on my character, click the notepad button, and then click on adjective and type something in in order to give me some kind of power. I knew I could have typed strong, or flying, but those weren't fun super powers. After all, going in to every level I would always type in flying or ghost on my character to give myself flight so I could reach the objectives as quick as possible (sometimes, for kicks, I'd also add giant so I could tower over these small, helpless little goofballs, but eventually I found it too difficult to run around). But what other super powers where there? I could type fire or flaming, but that would just kill me, or frozen but then I couldn't move. I was limited by the objective itself, which sounded creative but in practice really wasn't. I settled on flying, but the impression was made. Scribblenauts can be creative, but it feels more like a promise of creativity than an actual expressive medium. The objectives themselves weren't very creative most of the time, and I got the distinct feeling most of the game's development time and effort was put towards creating a wealth of objects and adjectives to use with the notepad.
When criticizing a game, I feel it is important to have at least some impression of how the work on the game was doled out, like in my review of Pokemon Sword/Shield, because as much as I'd like this or that feature, there is a practicality to be concerned with. There is only so much possible from a piece of media, and to ask too much is not only arrogant, but ignorant to what it is that produced it in the first place. Some of the most creative works were done because of trying to work within certain limitations (look at Silent Hill or Jaws), and so to ignore those limitations is to sometimes ignore the creativity involved in producing it. For Scribblenauts, its strength is in its objects and adjectives, and what takes a hit is its animation and in its objectives. In presentation, I am willing to concede that it was the correct choice to skimp a bit. It isn't paramount to the game or what makes it fun, because immersion isn't that important. With objectives, however, it is the expression with which the object and adjective list is meant to be components to. If there was one thing for the developers to focus on, it would have been on objectives that properly utilize their list. Again, this is a game for kids, but given there are 106 stars and only 60 are needed to complete the game, creating a subset of hard objectives would have been both rewarding to the player and fun to think up for the developer. It doesn't break the game by any means, but it severely limits the game to being simply a kid game with a mild amount of fun. It is a good idea not so much squandered as tailored for a particular audience. For what it is, Scribblenauts Unlimited is a fun, brief time if you need something to wind down with at the end of a hard day, or something you want to creatively play with your child or niece or nephew. As anything else, it aint much.
6.0
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