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Scribblenauts is a Nintendo DS video game by 5th Cell released in 2009. The game is the third title they've developed for the Nintendo DS. The premise of the game is granting the player the ability to summon any object and using it to solve a puzzle. Thousands upon thousands of items are available in the game, and they can be automatically summoned by typing them in via the keyboard or writing it out. The game is a first of its kind and has won numerous awards. A sequel, called Super Scribblenauts, has been released in Fall 2010.

Gameplay[]

There are 220 puzzles in the game that can be solved by summoning any noun in the English dictionary, or close to it. You are given an almost endless supply of objects to use, though the main goal of each stage is to finish it using as few items as possible. There are a variety of ways to finish a puzzle, but finding the route which uses the least amount of items proves to be a challenge.

Development[]

Scribblenauts was thought up by the 5th Cell team. They originally wanted to make a game where the player wrote a sentence and it appeared on screen, but thought it was too dull. Their idea evolved into what Scribblenauts is now, a game where you write a word and use the object that you created to solve a puzzle. The game was originally going to be called WordPlay but they decided to change it so they temporarily changed the name to Scribblenauts. But the name stuck.

A total of 15 people worked on the game, with 5 of them spending six months going through a dictionary and creating the Objectnaut, a database of objects. This let them create an object using simple 3D geometric shapes, so they didn't need to draw sprites and animations for everything, and assign properties that decide how the object acts in the game when reacting with different things.

Reception[]

The game has been extremely well received. So far it is the only game in history to receive an "overall game of E3" award by major media outlets. Three major outlets, including GameSpot, IGN, and GameSpy, have all awarded the title with the "Best game of E3 2009" award, while it has received similar awards from various other critics.

Cameos[]

  • Puzzle 8-11 is a reinactment of the clocktower scene from "Back to the Future".
  • When the player types in "NeoGAF", the logo of the message board will appear.
  • In the Japanese version of Scribblenauts, because of Konami publishing it, two (technically three) of their characters were added as cameos

See also[]

External links[]

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