Scribblenauts
Encyclopedia
Scribblenauts is an emergent
puzzle action
video game developed by 5th Cell
for the Nintendo DS
published by WB Games. The game was released September 15, 2009 in North America,
released the game in Japan under the name on January 27, 2011. It is the third Nintendo DS video game made by 5th Cell, the first two being Drawn to Life
and Lock's Quest
. The objective of Scribblenauts, as implied by its catchphrase "Write Anything, Solve Everything", is to complete puzzles to collect "Starites", helped by the player's ability to summon any object (from a database of tens of thousands) by writing its name on the touchscreen
. The game is considered by its developers to help promote emergent gameplay
by challenging the player to solve its puzzles within certain limitations or through multiple solutions.
Jeremiah Slaczka
, creator of Scribblenauts, envisioned the game as a combination of solving life situation puzzles alongside Mad Libs
. His vision was brought to realization through the "Objectnaut" engine created by 5th Cell's technical director, Marius Fahlbusch. Objectnaut allowed for a data driven
approach, and a significant portion of the development time was spent researching nouns and their properties, and categorizing them into
the Objectnaut database. This, along with the simple art designs of 5th Cell's Edison Yan, allowed for the team to easily add new words to the database without expending much effort to program new behavior.
Scribblenauts was first shown in a playable form at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, and became a sleeper hit
, winning several "Best of Show" awards, being the first portable console game to win such praise. Reviewers believed that 5th Cell delivered on their promise to allow nearly any possible object to be created for use in Scribblenauts, but also lamented that the choice of controls in the game hampered their full enjoyment of the title.
A sequel, Super Scribblenauts
, was developed for the Nintendo DS and was released on October 12, 2010. It features enhanced controls and the ability to modify nouns with adjectives. An iOS
version, Scribblenauts Remix, was released a year later on October 12, 2011, featuring selected levels from both DS games and new levels for the iOS version.
Scribblenauts is an exclusively side-scrolling
game controlled almost entirely with the Nintendo DS stylus, with the D-pad
and face buttons controlling the camera and the left and right shoulder buttons rotating objects. The player controls a character named Maxwell, who must collect objects called "Starites" to complete each level. Maxwell is guided by tapping the touchscreen, or if the player taps an object, Maxwell will pick it up or be given other options for interacting with that object, such as riding a horse or bicycle or shooting at an object if he holds a weapon. A fundamental element of Scribblenauts is the ability of the player to summon myriad objects into the game. This is achieved by writing the name of an object on the touchscreen. For example, the player can write "ladder", summoning a ladder, which the player may use to climb to an out-of-reach Starite. The player may turn the ladder on its side and set it on fire. The player may also chain objects together, such as chaining a piece of meat to a pole and holding it while riding on a raptor
. As such, the developers consider the game to strongly promote emergent gameplay
.
Summoned objects range among animals, weapons, forces of nature, famous people (both fictional and real), vehicles, household objects, easter eggs
of the development team, and even internet meme
s. However, the game does not include trademark
ed terms, nor potential profanity
. The game includes a homonym
system to offer the player possible choices between similar-sounding objects, such as distinguishing between a toy balloon
and a hot-air balloon; there is also a spellchecker to provide close matches for misspelled words. The North American release includes support for other languages including Brazilian Portuguese, French, and Spanish, with French-Canadian and Latin American variants available for words in the French and Spanish language sets, respectively. The UK version also accounts for difference between American and British English
, such as the differing meanings of the word "football". 5th Cell has stated that the limit to what objects may be summoned is up to the player's imagination. Players, using special software, claimed to have discovered that the full list of words is greater than 22,800 unique entries, but, in response, Slaczka asserted there were many more than this number.
The game is segmented into 220 levels over 10 themed areas, and each given a 4 star ranking based on its difficulty, with later areas featuring more high ranked levels. Puzzles are given a par for the number of objects they can summon, typically being between two and four, though the player is free to summon more, so long as there is space in the meter at the top screen (summoning the same number of objects as the par or less earns more points). There are two types of levels—puzzle and action levels. Puzzle levels are real-life situations (such as having to open a piñata) where the Starite is awarded once the puzzle is solved, while action levels will appeal to gamers that prefer side-scrolling platformers, featuring switches, spike traps, and other similar elements. Players are awarded "merits" for completing levels while meeting certain requirements, such as not summoning any weapon-like object. Once the player completes a level, a silver star appears on the level selection button and a "Free play" mode is unlocked. At that point, the player is given the option to play through the level three consecutive times without reusing objects. Successfully completing the challenge grants the player a gold star for that level. Scribblenauts presents a simplistic storyline, as the developers wished to focus on engaging gameplay. The game always rewards the player with "Ollars", its in-game money, to allow them to purchase new areas, different avatars and other visual changes to the game.
The game includes a level editor, allowing users to share these levels over the Nintendo Wi-Fi system. The player can start with any level that they have already beaten from the main game, and add new objects with new game properties. These new properties can vary significantly from the normal behavior, such as having a bear able to eat a plane.
. Creative Director
for 5th Cell, Jeremiah Slaczka, stated that they were seeking counterparts of Nintendogs
and Brain Age
, games that had attracted a much wider demographic than most other niche games, that 5th Cell could develop. The concept of Scribblenauts came from a combination of a previous idea he had for the DS that was similar to Mad Libs
and a dream of his. An example given for the Mad Libs was that players could write a Mad Lib of a "dog walking through a forest", and a dog would appear in a forest and walk through it. However, he realized the game would be tedious and that players would only be interested in using keywords. The dream was of being inside an Aztec
temple
and having to solve puzzles; one in particular involves three paintings, with the objective being straightening them and then moving on to the next room through a portal. While he thought it was a cool idea for a game, he also felt that it lacked both a hook and replayability. He debated whether this would work best on the Wii
or the DS
, but later decided to combine the writing element with a puzzle element to fix the lack of replayability. Slaczka realized that the concept of the game may have been considered impossible by other programmers, but found that 5th Cell's Technical Director
Marius Fahlbusch felt confident they could create the required elements.
During development, Slaczka and the team tried to figure out what the DS was all about, trying to make Scribblenauts appeal to everyone. As Lock's Quest was thought of first, they focused on releasing that game first while beginning the development of Scribblenauts. The game entered beta around May 2009, and had numerous play-testers exploring the game. About half of 5th Cell's staff worked on the game. It was developed alongside the DS version of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter
.
Scribblenauts was originally developed without having a publisher for the game. Slaczka noted that unlike other games where the developers could complete and polish a single level to garner interest while work on the rest of the game continued, Scribblenauts needed to show support for its large dictionary from the start, making it difficult to promote the game. The company was in negotiations with a publisher in the early part of 2009, letting that publisher decide when it would be best to announce the game. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment officially announced itself as the publisher for Scribblenauts in May 2009. Slaczka noted that of the other publishers they talked to, they felt Warner Bros. was the best one, particularly due to their proximity to 5th Cell and their interest in the title.
Scribblenauts was originally titled "Wordplay", but the team felt that this was "generic". The title Scribblenauts began as a temporary name to replace it that would work better for pitching the game, but as development proceeded, the team couldn't think of a better one, so the name stuck and became the final title of the product.
Konami
published the game in Japan on January 27, 2011, which features Konami characters such as Old Snake
, Manake Takane
and the Vic Viper
.
engine called "Objectnaut" created by Fahlbusch. Within Objectnaut, each object is given a set of properties, including physical characteristics, artificial intelligence
behavior, and how the player (through Maxwell) can interact with it. Five people from the team spent six months researching dictionaries and encyclopedias to create a large database of objects within the Objectnaut's framework, and then mapped out a hierarchy of data from this information. For example, every mammal
-based object in the game is given the property of having "organic flesh", allowing it to be eaten or turned into meat, without having to specify these functions for each type of mammal they used. The Objectnaut approach allowed the team to create two distinct objects for words that may have similar meanings simply by adjusting each word's properties in the database: "lion
", "tiger
" and "leopard
" while similar will behave differently and have different art assets, while the only difference in the game between "croissant
" and "danish
" is that the Danish may be able to roll like a wheel. The team made sure to balance the abilities of the various objects that could be summoned to avoid creating an "uber
character" that would act as a skeleton key
for solving all of the levels, and give players more courage to try different elements. Slaczka noted that he would be frequently asked if certain difficult words were in the game when interviewed by the press, most of the time being able to respond affirmatively to these questions. In an example given by Slaczka, a "hardcore" journalist wanted twenty minutes with the game to try to stump it during the 2009 E3 convention, but, according to Slaczka, "he had a real hard time stumping it and shook my hand" after that period.
Designing each item required the developers to go word-by-word. Slaczka stated that certain kinds of words, such as cheeses, require little to no differences, besides items such as Limburger which would scare people away from it. He stated that the developers used discretion when deciding what to make look different, providing a cyborg
, robot
, and android, which he felt were different enough to require their own individual designs. He later stated that there was no way to test out each item and each way they interact with another item, as it was virtually impossible for them to accomplish this, using an example of an airplane being frozen, brought back in time, placing an old man on top of it, bringing it back to present time, and setting it on fire. Slaczka stated that while many games create a first level with enemies and platforms, polishing the level and moving on, the players can write any item available in level one that they can write in a later level. He commented that if players wrote "anvil" and it was missing its "heavy" property, they may be turned off of the game. They spent roughly 80% of the development fine-tuning the various items, and as such, they could not provide a preview to demonstrate the game.
Each of the words programmed into the game has associated art with it led by 5th Cell artist Edison Yan. The task of creating the art was simplified through the "minimal" design style of 5th Cell's previous games. Each object is rendered as in 3D
with objects acting as doll on a 2D
plane
. This was chosen to avoiding having to create a large number of animations for 2D. The development team had to design each AI-controlled object by hand, according to Slaczka, describing how the objects moves, and what it likes and dislikes, how much health it has, and other possible characteristics. Level design focused on providing a large variety of situations, including splitting levels between Puzzle and Action types, to avoid having the player develop a limited toolbox of common words and not exploring other possible solutions. Much of the initial level development was done on paper and to explore situations not commonly found in video games, due to their vocabulary system. They ended up selecting more than a hundred levels out of over seven hundred they had generated internally for the game. Both Merits and Ollars were added to reward the player for completion, with Slaczka comparing these to Xbox Live Achievements.
The game primarily uses the touchscreen to control Maxwell and other objects; the developers considered using the directional pad of the DS but realized that they would still need to rely on the touchscreen for certain actions and thus focused most of the game's controls through that interface. The game includes 5th Cell's own handwriting recognition system
for writing down objects which Slaczka considered to be better than Nintendo
's own system for Brain Age
. The team included a virtual keyboard in addition to this system knowing that even "the human brain can't understand chicken scratch".
Players who pre-order the game at GameStop
and EB Games in the United States, Canada, and Australia will receive a replica of Maxwell's "rooster hat", a term coined by Destructoid
according to Slaczka. However, several customers who did pre-order from Gamestop
and EB Games did not receive a rooster hat, due to extremely limited supplies. The game was launched by a special event at the Nintendo World Store in New York City
on September 13, 2009, with Slaczka and other 5th Cell developers on hand for the event. Toys R Us announced that on the day of its release, it would be $14.99 instead of $29.99 Pixel Verdict.com put the game on its "most anticipated game of September" list.
was released on October 12, 2010. In addition to addressing issues with the control scheme, Super Scribblenauts includes a larger vocabulary including the use of adjective
s to modify nouns, influencing the object's behavior.
platform, was released by Warner Bros. Interactive on October 12, 2011. Ported to the platform by developers Iron Galaxy, the iOS version provides forty levels from both Scribblenauts and its sequel, along with ten new levels for the iOS. The mechanics of the game are based on Super Scribblenauts, allowing for the use of adjectives in addition to nouns. The game uses built-in features of iOS, such as the touch keyboard, and was released simultaneously with iOS version 5, incorporating new features such as cloud storage
to play the game across multiple devices.
As a result of a price drop, to approximately one dollar, Scribblenauts Remix took the top sales spot for iOS games during the week of November 14, 2011, knocking long-term favorite Angry Birds
from this spot.
listed Scribblenauts in a preview of Nintendo DS games in 2009, labeling it as one of their top picks for the year. They described it as "quite possibly one of the system's most ambitious designs yet." IGN readers ranked the world debut article about Scribblenauts as the eighth best Nintendo DS article of 2008 on their web site.
The game was very well-received at the 2009 E3 Convention and was considered the "sleeper hit" of the show. Scribblenauts is the first portable video game in history to win "Best of Show" awards for E3 from any major gaming media outlet. The game was named "Best Original Game" and "Best Handheld Game" by the Game Critics Awards
. Scribblenauts was named the overall "Best of Show" by Gamespot
, Gamespy
, and IGN
, in addition to other awards. 1UP.com
named Scribblenauts their E3's "Most Innovative" title. X-Play
gave the game its E3 "Best Original Game" and "Best Handheld Game" awards. Ars Technica
considered the game as the show's "Most Pleasant Surprise". Joystiq
performed a ten-word test of the game, and found only one word, "plumbob", was not yet present in the game, but were promised it would be in the final version. Part of the success at E3 was considered partially due to the inclusion of then-recent Keyboard Cat
Internet meme, which led to a grassroots
-type excitement about the game at the convention. Adam Sessler
of G4 TV believed that Scribblenautss E3 success was from being a small but successful game from a small company in contrast to numerous other premier titles from other major developers and publishers that have become standard for the convention, such that the uniqueness of everything about the game made it the standout title of the show. Scribblenauts was given a much more predominate display in Warner Bros. Interactive's booth at the next major convention, the 2009 Comic-Con International
.
One example of the possibilities of Scribblenauts that led to further attention to the game are given in the ESRB
's attempt to describe the "cartoon violence" and "comic mischief" within the game as to grant it an "E10+" rating. The ESRB's description includes possible examples of the game's level of violence as "a club can be used to hit an animal; steak can be attached to a baby to attract lions; rockets can be lobbed at a man". In a post at NeoGAF
within a thread dedicated to the game, user "Feep" relayed the experience of discovering during E3 that he was able to go back in time with a time machine
to collect a dinosaur
in order to defeat an army of robot
zombie
s that could not be defeated with regular weapons. The story, as memorialized as "Post 217", has led to 5th Cell artist Edison Yan creating a desktop wallpaper image of the story, in appreciation of the positive fan response to the game, and the terms "Post Two One Seven", "Feep", and "Neogaf" have been included as summonable objects in the game. The image has been used as promotional material, appearing as an insert poster for the Italian version of Official Nintendo Magazine. Slaczka credits the word-of-mouth popularity of "Post 217" for part of the game's success at E3, and noted that he had contacted Feep to gain his permission to include "Feep" (appearing as a robot zombie) within the game. The NeoGAF forums proceeded to expand on their praise for the game by creating a series of avatar
s of video game and other related characters (which will not otherwise appear in the game due to trademark issues) for their forums inspired by Yan's art design, and even some of the members that created the avatars were contacted to work in the second game, Super Scribblenauts
. Yan himself has drawn several more avatars in the same style for other games such as Street Fighter II
and Final Fantasy VII
.
considered the game "an incredible achievement", with its word database "so utterly complete in its collection of everything ever in the universe" and its specificness on these terms. Craig Harris of IGN
asserted that "the developers fully deliver on [the] promise" of allowing player to summon nearly any imagined object, and, based on the core game alone, is an "incredibly versatile Nintendo DS experience". Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica
praises the game as "undeniably new and impressive" and urged players to support games that take risks with their innovation. Ray Barnholt of 1UP.com
noted that while the game "isn't exactly the be-all end-all videogame" that it received prior to release, the game remains "unmissable" due to its sheer novelty value. The game's feature of forcing the player to consider different solutions when replaying levels was seen by Anthony Gallegos of Gamespy
as a "really clever way to encourage replayability while subtly upping the challenge".
However, reviewers complained about the game's poor controls, to the point that the implementation "almost kills a fantastic game". Reviews specifically commented how the touch screen is used both to manipulate the objects placed in the game and to move Maxwell; this would result in inadvertently having Maxwell walk to his death or to disrupt a delicately-prepared arrangement of objects prior to being ready to move him. Craig Harris of IGN
notes that while one can direct Maxwell indirectly, the character would often fail to avoid or overcome simple obstacles, similar to troop movements in real-time strategy games, such that overcoming these issues requires a significant amount of precise controls by the player. It was suggested that while it was understood why 5th Cell opted to use the touchscreen in this manner to avoid too much flipping between the stylus and face-button controls, they would have appreciated the option for customizing the controls. The decision to use the touch screen controls was described by Walker as "possibly the most wildly stupid design decision of all time", and that if the movement controls were mapped to the face buttons, the game would have been a "beautiful thing". Walker also questioned the choice to have the game's camera snap back to Maxwell as soon as the controls for it were released by the player, as it made it both difficult to set up objects that were off-screen from Maxwell, and to watch the results of certain interactions, such as fights between computer-controlled characters, that occurred off-screen.
When it is possible to connect objects to other objects, reviewers found that finding the connection points to be difficult, and would often trigger Maxwell to move. Barnholt described the entire game as feeling like a prototype with its odd physics and not as polished as 5th Cell's previous games, though acknowledged the overall game is still an impressive feat for the small development team. IGN's Ryan Geddes criticized the game's poor controls and physics to require an amount of patience to overcome in order to enjoy the game, and raised concerns that the title was rushed to market after its overwhelming positive response from the E3 convention. In a postmortem, 5TH Cell's co-founder Joseph Tringali stated that they were aware that the controls would take "a big hit" from game reviewers, and attempted to work in a face-button control scheme, but would have not been able to complete it within the deadline set by their self-funded schedule. Tringali further noted that they did not spend as much time on the stylus controls earlier in development, and would have considered sacrificing another feature, like the Nintendo Wi-Fi, to improve them.
Reviewers also identified some unexpected behavior from some objects or combinations of them, leading to a inconsistency in the difficulty of the various puzzles. Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica
, in calling Scribblenauts a "a frustrating, often maddening game", described that he often encounters puzzles that, after trying several solutions that should have worked by common sense, he eventually happened upon a less logical solution that worked. Walker considered the puzzles range "between uninspired and simple and frustratingly obscure and fiddly". Many critics experienced that after getting stumped on a puzzle, they would often resort to playing around in the free play mode. Edge
magazine identified that the free play mode was more enjoyable as it masked the problems with controls, physics, and the general structure of the puzzle game that followed it, and considered what improvements in these modes could be made to create an experience closer to that of LittleBigPlanet
. In particular for the action levels, reviewers found that they would be less likely to explore alternate solutions and fall into the pattern of using the same set of objects, making these levels repetitive towards the end. On the other hand, the puzzle levels were well-received; Andrew Reiner of Game Informer
stated the time spent while solving the puzzle levels was when his "creative juices were joyously sapped". The presence of the "Ollars" currency system allows players to skip levels they found difficult. Kurchera also noted that with some puzzles, the game is often better played with others, including young children, as the combination of imaginative ideas will likely eventually stumble upon a solution. Simon Parkin of Game Set Watch agreed, believing the game is best enjoyed when one thinks like a child as "free of the dry, efficient logic of adulthood, a child’s imagination also opens the game up in ways beyond most adults’ reach". Seth Schiesel of the New York Times considers the ultimate experience of the game a let-down after the E3 hype due to the controls and obfuscation of the puzzles, and though it was not a "great game", he considers the concept a "great idea" that can be built upon for a possible sequel.
According to the NPD Group
, Scribblenauts sold 194,000 units in the United States during September 2009, following Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days in top Nintendo DS sales. The game also showed strong sales during December 2009, becoming the 16th best selling game of that month in North America. By February 2010, the game had sold more than one million units worldwide. It was the 5th best-selling Nintendo DS game for 2009 in North America and the 1st best selling 3rd party game on DS.
Time
named Scribblenauts the 7th best video game of 2009. Scribblenauts won the "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming", "Portable Game of the Year", and "Outstanding Achievement in Portable Game Design" awards, and was nominated for the "Casual Game of the Year" award for the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
. The game won "Innovation" and "Best Handheld Game" at the 10th annual Game Developers Choice Awards
.
, which created a minor controversy, since sambo is considered a racial slur against black people
(popularized by the children's book Little Black Sambo
) and watermelons have historically been used in negative stereotypes against African Americans.
The controversy was only reported on by a few gaming blogs, most notably of which was Kotaku
, and was not widely picked up by gaming press or mainstream media. Slaczka stated that "sambo" is a Spanish
term for a fig leaf gourd
as used in fanesca
, and that the watermelon image was due to reusing art within the game, a practice which occurred liberally throughout the game to save space on the DS cartridge; Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku
noted that the gourd and a watermelon do share a similar appearance and that of the 22,802 word list the game has, no other racial terms (not just for African-Americans, but all ethnic groups) were found. Warner Bros. Interactive apologized and stated that they "deeply regret the unfortunate oversight" for the depiction of the word in the game.
Emergent gameplay
Emergent gameplay refers to complex situations in video games, board games, or table top role-playing games that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics....
puzzle action
Action game
Action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes diverse subgenres such as fighting games, shooter games, and platform games, which are widely considered the most important action games, though some...
video game developed by 5th Cell
5th Cell
5TH Cell is an independently owned video game developer founded in 2003 as 5TH Cell Media, LLC. by Joseph M. Tringali, Jeremiah Slaczka and Brett Caird and currently develops video games for the Nintendo DS and Wii.-Overview:...
for the Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
published by WB Games. The game was released September 15, 2009 in North America,
Konami
is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...
released the game in Japan under the name on January 27, 2011. It is the third Nintendo DS video game made by 5th Cell, the first two being Drawn to Life
Drawn to Life
Drawn to Life is an action-adventure/platform game for the Nintendo DS developed by 5th Cell and published by THQ. In the game, players create their own playable characters, level objects and accessories by drawing them using the DS's stylus and touch screen.Drawn to Life requires the player to...
and Lock's Quest
Lock's Quest
Lock's Quest is a real-time strategy video game developed by 5th Cell and published by THQ. This is 5th Cell's second Nintendo DS game. It was released in North America on September 8, 2008, in Europe on September 26, 2008 and in Australia on September 25, 2008.-Gameplay:Lock's Quest is a real-time...
. The objective of Scribblenauts, as implied by its catchphrase "Write Anything, Solve Everything", is to complete puzzles to collect "Starites", helped by the player's ability to summon any object (from a database of tens of thousands) by writing its name on the touchscreen
Touchscreen
A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus...
. The game is considered by its developers to help promote emergent gameplay
Emergent gameplay
Emergent gameplay refers to complex situations in video games, board games, or table top role-playing games that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics....
by challenging the player to solve its puzzles within certain limitations or through multiple solutions.
Jeremiah Slaczka
Jeremiah Slaczka
Jeremiah Slaczka, also known by his nickname Miah, is a video game designer/creative director and co-founder of 5TH Cell, a video game developer in Bellevue, Washington...
, creator of Scribblenauts, envisioned the game as a combination of solving life situation puzzles alongside Mad Libs
Mad Libs
Mad Libs is a phrasal template word game where one player prompts another for a list of words to substitute for blanks in a story, usually with funny results...
. His vision was brought to realization through the "Objectnaut" engine created by 5th Cell's technical director, Marius Fahlbusch. Objectnaut allowed for a data driven
Data-driven design
In computer programming, data-driven programming is a programming paradigm in which the program statements describe the data to be matched and the processing required rather than defining a sequence of steps to be taken. Adapting abstract data type design methods to object-oriented programming...
approach, and a significant portion of the development time was spent researching nouns and their properties, and categorizing them into
the Objectnaut database. This, along with the simple art designs of 5th Cell's Edison Yan, allowed for the team to easily add new words to the database without expending much effort to program new behavior.
Scribblenauts was first shown in a playable form at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, and became a sleeper hit
Sleeper hit
A sleeper hit, a.k.a. surprise hit , refers to a film, book, single, album, TV show, or video game that gains unexpected success or recognition...
, winning several "Best of Show" awards, being the first portable console game to win such praise. Reviewers believed that 5th Cell delivered on their promise to allow nearly any possible object to be created for use in Scribblenauts, but also lamented that the choice of controls in the game hampered their full enjoyment of the title.
A sequel, Super Scribblenauts
Super Scribblenauts
Super Scribblenauts is an emergent action puzzle game developed by 5th Cell and published by WB Games for the Nintendo DS handheld game console. The game was released in October 12, 2010...
, was developed for the Nintendo DS and was released on October 12, 2010. It features enhanced controls and the ability to modify nouns with adjectives. An iOS
IOS
iOS is an operating system for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV.IOS may also refer to:-Companies and organisations:* Illinois Ornithological Society, American state-based bird club...
version, Scribblenauts Remix, was released a year later on October 12, 2011, featuring selected levels from both DS games and new levels for the iOS version.
Gameplay
Side-scrolling video game
A side-scrolling game or side-scroller is a video game in which the gameplay action is viewed from a side-view camera angle, and the onscreen characters generally move from the left side of the screen to the right. These games make use of scrolling computer display technology...
game controlled almost entirely with the Nintendo DS stylus, with the D-pad
D-pad
A D-pad is a flat, usually thumb-operated directional control with one button on each point, found on nearly all modern video game console gamepads, game controllers, on the remote control units of some television and DVD players, and smart phones...
and face buttons controlling the camera and the left and right shoulder buttons rotating objects. The player controls a character named Maxwell, who must collect objects called "Starites" to complete each level. Maxwell is guided by tapping the touchscreen, or if the player taps an object, Maxwell will pick it up or be given other options for interacting with that object, such as riding a horse or bicycle or shooting at an object if he holds a weapon. A fundamental element of Scribblenauts is the ability of the player to summon myriad objects into the game. This is achieved by writing the name of an object on the touchscreen. For example, the player can write "ladder", summoning a ladder, which the player may use to climb to an out-of-reach Starite. The player may turn the ladder on its side and set it on fire. The player may also chain objects together, such as chaining a piece of meat to a pole and holding it while riding on a raptor
Velociraptor
Velociraptor is a genus of dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur that existed approximately 75 to 71 million years ago during the later part of the Cretaceous Period. Two species are currently recognized, although others have been assigned in the past. The type species is V. mongoliensis; fossils...
. As such, the developers consider the game to strongly promote emergent gameplay
Emergent gameplay
Emergent gameplay refers to complex situations in video games, board games, or table top role-playing games that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics....
.
Summoned objects range among animals, weapons, forces of nature, famous people (both fictional and real), vehicles, household objects, easter eggs
Easter egg (media)
Image:Carl Oswald Rostosky - Zwei Kaninchen und ein Igel 1861.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Example of Easter egg hidden within imagerect 467 383 539 434 desc none...
of the development team, and even internet meme
Internet meme
The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...
s. However, the game does not include trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
ed terms, nor potential profanity
Profanity
Profanity is a show of disrespect, or a desecration or debasement of someone or something. Profanity can take the form of words, expressions, gestures, or other social behaviors that are socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rude, vulgar, obscene, desecrating, or other forms.The...
. The game includes a homonym
Homonym
In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...
system to offer the player possible choices between similar-sounding objects, such as distinguishing between a toy balloon
Toy balloon
A toy balloon is an inflatable object which is often made of plastic or natural, biodegradable rubber.-History:Prior to the invention of rubber balloons by Michael Faraday in 1824, balloons were made from pig bladders and animal intestines....
and a hot-air balloon; there is also a spellchecker to provide close matches for misspelled words. The North American release includes support for other languages including Brazilian Portuguese, French, and Spanish, with French-Canadian and Latin American variants available for words in the French and Spanish language sets, respectively. The UK version also accounts for difference between American and British English
American and British English differences
This is one of a series of articles about the differences between British English and American English, which, for the purposes of these articles, are defined as follows:...
, such as the differing meanings of the word "football". 5th Cell has stated that the limit to what objects may be summoned is up to the player's imagination. Players, using special software, claimed to have discovered that the full list of words is greater than 22,800 unique entries, but, in response, Slaczka asserted there were many more than this number.
The game is segmented into 220 levels over 10 themed areas, and each given a 4 star ranking based on its difficulty, with later areas featuring more high ranked levels. Puzzles are given a par for the number of objects they can summon, typically being between two and four, though the player is free to summon more, so long as there is space in the meter at the top screen (summoning the same number of objects as the par or less earns more points). There are two types of levels—puzzle and action levels. Puzzle levels are real-life situations (such as having to open a piñata) where the Starite is awarded once the puzzle is solved, while action levels will appeal to gamers that prefer side-scrolling platformers, featuring switches, spike traps, and other similar elements. Players are awarded "merits" for completing levels while meeting certain requirements, such as not summoning any weapon-like object. Once the player completes a level, a silver star appears on the level selection button and a "Free play" mode is unlocked. At that point, the player is given the option to play through the level three consecutive times without reusing objects. Successfully completing the challenge grants the player a gold star for that level. Scribblenauts presents a simplistic storyline, as the developers wished to focus on engaging gameplay. The game always rewards the player with "Ollars", its in-game money, to allow them to purchase new areas, different avatars and other visual changes to the game.
The game includes a level editor, allowing users to share these levels over the Nintendo Wi-Fi system. The player can start with any level that they have already beaten from the main game, and add new objects with new game properties. These new properties can vary significantly from the normal behavior, such as having a bear able to eat a plane.
Development
Scribblenauts was first conceived in the second quarter of 2007, near the same time that they had envisioned Lock's QuestLock's Quest
Lock's Quest is a real-time strategy video game developed by 5th Cell and published by THQ. This is 5th Cell's second Nintendo DS game. It was released in North America on September 8, 2008, in Europe on September 26, 2008 and in Australia on September 25, 2008.-Gameplay:Lock's Quest is a real-time...
. Creative Director
Creative Director
A creative director is a position often found within the graphic design, film, music, fashion, advertising, media or entertainment industries, but may be useful in other creative organizations such as web development and software development firms as well....
for 5th Cell, Jeremiah Slaczka, stated that they were seeking counterparts of Nintendogs
Nintendogs
is a real-time pet simulation video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console. It was first released in Japan, and was later released in North America, Australia, Europe, and other regions. It was originally released in three different versions:...
and Brain Age
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!, also known as Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? in PAL regions, is an entertainment video game that employs puzzles. It was developed and published by the video gaming company Nintendo for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console...
, games that had attracted a much wider demographic than most other niche games, that 5th Cell could develop. The concept of Scribblenauts came from a combination of a previous idea he had for the DS that was similar to Mad Libs
Mad Libs
Mad Libs is a phrasal template word game where one player prompts another for a list of words to substitute for blanks in a story, usually with funny results...
and a dream of his. An example given for the Mad Libs was that players could write a Mad Lib of a "dog walking through a forest", and a dog would appear in a forest and walk through it. However, he realized the game would be tedious and that players would only be interested in using keywords. The dream was of being inside an Aztec
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
temple
Temple
A temple is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual activities, such as prayer and sacrifice, or analogous rites. A templum constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest, or augur. It has the same root as the word "template," a plan in preparation of the building that was marked out...
and having to solve puzzles; one in particular involves three paintings, with the objective being straightening them and then moving on to the next room through a portal. While he thought it was a cool idea for a game, he also felt that it lacked both a hook and replayability. He debated whether this would work best on the Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
or the DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
, but later decided to combine the writing element with a puzzle element to fix the lack of replayability. Slaczka realized that the concept of the game may have been considered impossible by other programmers, but found that 5th Cell's Technical Director
Technical director
The Technical Director or Technical Manager is usually a senior technical person within a software company, film studio, theatrical company or television studio...
Marius Fahlbusch felt confident they could create the required elements.
During development, Slaczka and the team tried to figure out what the DS was all about, trying to make Scribblenauts appeal to everyone. As Lock's Quest was thought of first, they focused on releasing that game first while beginning the development of Scribblenauts. The game entered beta around May 2009, and had numerous play-testers exploring the game. About half of 5th Cell's staff worked on the game. It was developed alongside the DS version of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter
Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter
Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter is the title of two sequels of the video game Drawn to Life, published by THQ. One of the games was developed by 5th Cell for the Nintendo DS, while the other was created by Planet Moon Studios for the Wii....
.
Scribblenauts was originally developed without having a publisher for the game. Slaczka noted that unlike other games where the developers could complete and polish a single level to garner interest while work on the rest of the game continued, Scribblenauts needed to show support for its large dictionary from the start, making it difficult to promote the game. The company was in negotiations with a publisher in the early part of 2009, letting that publisher decide when it would be best to announce the game. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment officially announced itself as the publisher for Scribblenauts in May 2009. Slaczka noted that of the other publishers they talked to, they felt Warner Bros. was the best one, particularly due to their proximity to 5th Cell and their interest in the title.
Scribblenauts was originally titled "Wordplay", but the team felt that this was "generic". The title Scribblenauts began as a temporary name to replace it that would work better for pitching the game, but as development proceeded, the team couldn't think of a better one, so the name stuck and became the final title of the product.
Konami
Konami
is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...
published the game in Japan on January 27, 2011, which features Konami characters such as Old Snake
Solid Snake
Metal Gear, initially released in 1987, introduces Solid Snake, the rookie recruit of the elite special-forces unit FOXHOUND. Snake is sent by team leader Big Boss into the rogue nation Outer Heaven to rescue his missing teammate Gray Fox and discover who or what the "METAL GEAR" mentioned is, and...
, Manake Takane
LovePlus
is a dating sim developed and published by Konami for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console. Released on September 3, 2009 only in Japan.-Characters:Protagonist -Love Plus +:...
and the Vic Viper
Gradius (series)
The Gradius games, first introduced in 1985, make up a series of scrolling shooter video games published by Konami for a variety of portable, console and arcade platforms. In many games in the series, the player controls a ship known as the Vic Viper...
.
Engine
The core engine of Scribblenauts is a data-drivenData-driven design
In computer programming, data-driven programming is a programming paradigm in which the program statements describe the data to be matched and the processing required rather than defining a sequence of steps to be taken. Adapting abstract data type design methods to object-oriented programming...
engine called "Objectnaut" created by Fahlbusch. Within Objectnaut, each object is given a set of properties, including physical characteristics, artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
behavior, and how the player (through Maxwell) can interact with it. Five people from the team spent six months researching dictionaries and encyclopedias to create a large database of objects within the Objectnaut's framework, and then mapped out a hierarchy of data from this information. For example, every mammal
Mammal
Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...
-based object in the game is given the property of having "organic flesh", allowing it to be eaten or turned into meat, without having to specify these functions for each type of mammal they used. The Objectnaut approach allowed the team to create two distinct objects for words that may have similar meanings simply by adjusting each word's properties in the database: "lion
Lion
The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...
", "tiger
Tiger
The tiger is the largest cat species, reaching a total body length of up to and weighing up to . Their most recognizable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with lighter underparts...
" and "leopard
Leopard
The leopard , Panthera pardus, is a member of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera, the other three being the tiger, lion, and jaguar. The leopard was once distributed across eastern and southern Asia and Africa, from Siberia to South Africa, but its...
" while similar will behave differently and have different art assets, while the only difference in the game between "croissant
Croissant
A croissant is a buttery flaky pastry named for its distinctive crescent shape. It is also sometimes called a crescent, from the French word for "crescent". Croissants are made of a leavened variant of puff pastry...
" and "danish
Danish pastry
Danish pastry is a sweet pastry which has become a specialty of Denmark and neighbouring Scandinavian countries and is popular throughout the industrialized world, although the form it takes can differ significantly from country to country...
" is that the Danish may be able to roll like a wheel. The team made sure to balance the abilities of the various objects that could be summoned to avoid creating an "uber
Über
Über comes from the German language. It has one umlaut. It is a cognate of both Latin super and Greek ὑπέρ...
character" that would act as a skeleton key
Skeleton Key
Skeleton Key is a rock band based in New York City. The band is the brainchild of bassist and singer Erik Sanko, who is the only constant member of the band...
for solving all of the levels, and give players more courage to try different elements. Slaczka noted that he would be frequently asked if certain difficult words were in the game when interviewed by the press, most of the time being able to respond affirmatively to these questions. In an example given by Slaczka, a "hardcore" journalist wanted twenty minutes with the game to try to stump it during the 2009 E3 convention, but, according to Slaczka, "he had a real hard time stumping it and shook my hand" after that period.
Designing each item required the developers to go word-by-word. Slaczka stated that certain kinds of words, such as cheeses, require little to no differences, besides items such as Limburger which would scare people away from it. He stated that the developers used discretion when deciding what to make look different, providing a cyborg
Cyborg
A cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. D. S...
, robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
, and android, which he felt were different enough to require their own individual designs. He later stated that there was no way to test out each item and each way they interact with another item, as it was virtually impossible for them to accomplish this, using an example of an airplane being frozen, brought back in time, placing an old man on top of it, bringing it back to present time, and setting it on fire. Slaczka stated that while many games create a first level with enemies and platforms, polishing the level and moving on, the players can write any item available in level one that they can write in a later level. He commented that if players wrote "anvil" and it was missing its "heavy" property, they may be turned off of the game. They spent roughly 80% of the development fine-tuning the various items, and as such, they could not provide a preview to demonstrate the game.
Each of the words programmed into the game has associated art with it led by 5th Cell artist Edison Yan. The task of creating the art was simplified through the "minimal" design style of 5th Cell's previous games. Each object is rendered as in 3D
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
with objects acting as doll on a 2D
2D computer graphics
2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models and by techniques specific to them...
plane
Plane
-Physical objects:* Aeroplane or airplane, a fixed-wing aircraft* Plane , a woodworking tool to smooth surfaces* Platanus, a genus of trees with the common name "plane"* Acer pseudoplatanus, a tree species sometimes called "plane"...
. This was chosen to avoiding having to create a large number of animations for 2D. The development team had to design each AI-controlled object by hand, according to Slaczka, describing how the objects moves, and what it likes and dislikes, how much health it has, and other possible characteristics. Level design focused on providing a large variety of situations, including splitting levels between Puzzle and Action types, to avoid having the player develop a limited toolbox of common words and not exploring other possible solutions. Much of the initial level development was done on paper and to explore situations not commonly found in video games, due to their vocabulary system. They ended up selecting more than a hundred levels out of over seven hundred they had generated internally for the game. Both Merits and Ollars were added to reward the player for completion, with Slaczka comparing these to Xbox Live Achievements.
The game primarily uses the touchscreen to control Maxwell and other objects; the developers considered using the directional pad of the DS but realized that they would still need to rely on the touchscreen for certain actions and thus focused most of the game's controls through that interface. The game includes 5th Cell's own handwriting recognition system
Handwriting recognition
Handwriting recognition is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other devices. The image of the written text may be sensed "off line" from a piece of paper by optical scanning or...
for writing down objects which Slaczka considered to be better than Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
's own system for Brain Age
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!, also known as Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? in PAL regions, is an entertainment video game that employs puzzles. It was developed and published by the video gaming company Nintendo for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console...
. The team included a virtual keyboard in addition to this system knowing that even "the human brain can't understand chicken scratch".
Promotion
GameStop
GameStop Corporation is an American video game and entertainment software retailer. The company, whose headquarters is in Grapevine, Texas, United States, operates 6,500 retail stores throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New...
and EB Games in the United States, Canada, and Australia will receive a replica of Maxwell's "rooster hat", a term coined by Destructoid
Destructoid
Destructoid is an independent video game-focused blog based in San Francisco, California that was founded in March 2006. It has since grown into one of the most widely read video game sites on the Internet, reaching more than 3 million unique visitors per month...
according to Slaczka. However, several customers who did pre-order from Gamestop
GameStop
GameStop Corporation is an American video game and entertainment software retailer. The company, whose headquarters is in Grapevine, Texas, United States, operates 6,500 retail stores throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New...
and EB Games did not receive a rooster hat, due to extremely limited supplies. The game was launched by a special event at the Nintendo World Store in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
on September 13, 2009, with Slaczka and other 5th Cell developers on hand for the event. Toys R Us announced that on the day of its release, it would be $14.99 instead of $29.99 Pixel Verdict.com put the game on its "most anticipated game of September" list.
Super Scribblenauts
A Nintendo DS sequel to Scribblenauts titled Super ScribblenautsSuper Scribblenauts
Super Scribblenauts is an emergent action puzzle game developed by 5th Cell and published by WB Games for the Nintendo DS handheld game console. The game was released in October 12, 2010...
was released on October 12, 2010. In addition to addressing issues with the control scheme, Super Scribblenauts includes a larger vocabulary including the use of adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s to modify nouns, influencing the object's behavior.
Scribblenauts Remix
Scribblenauts Remix, a version of Scribblenauts for the iOSIOS
iOS is an operating system for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV.IOS may also refer to:-Companies and organisations:* Illinois Ornithological Society, American state-based bird club...
platform, was released by Warner Bros. Interactive on October 12, 2011. Ported to the platform by developers Iron Galaxy, the iOS version provides forty levels from both Scribblenauts and its sequel, along with ten new levels for the iOS. The mechanics of the game are based on Super Scribblenauts, allowing for the use of adjectives in addition to nouns. The game uses built-in features of iOS, such as the touch keyboard, and was released simultaneously with iOS version 5, incorporating new features such as cloud storage
Cloud storage
Cloud storage is a model of networked online storage where data is stored on virtualized pools of storage which are generally hosted by third parties. Hosting companies operate large data centers; and people who require their data to be hosted buy or lease storage capacity from them and use it for...
to play the game across multiple devices.
As a result of a price drop, to approximately one dollar, Scribblenauts Remix took the top sales spot for iOS games during the week of November 14, 2011, knocking long-term favorite Angry Birds
Angry Birds
Angry Birds is a puzzle video game developed by Finnish computer game developer Rovio Mobile. Inspired primarily by a sketch of stylized wingless birds, the game was first released for Apple's iOS in December 2009...
from this spot.
Pre-release
IGNIGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
listed Scribblenauts in a preview of Nintendo DS games in 2009, labeling it as one of their top picks for the year. They described it as "quite possibly one of the system's most ambitious designs yet." IGN readers ranked the world debut article about Scribblenauts as the eighth best Nintendo DS article of 2008 on their web site.
The game was very well-received at the 2009 E3 Convention and was considered the "sleeper hit" of the show. Scribblenauts is the first portable video game in history to win "Best of Show" awards for E3 from any major gaming media outlet. The game was named "Best Original Game" and "Best Handheld Game" by the Game Critics Awards
Game Critics Awards
The Game Critics Awards are a set of annual awards held after the E3 video game conference since 1998. The awards are given to products displayed at E3 with the title Best of E3 of their category. The nominees and winners of the awards are chosen by individual judges representing 35 major North...
. Scribblenauts was named the overall "Best of Show" by Gamespot
GameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
, Gamespy
GameSpy
GameSpy Industries, Inc., known simply as GameSpy, is a division of IGN Entertainment, which operates a network of game websites and provides online video game-related services and software. GameSpy dates back to the 1996 release of an internet Quake server search program named QSpy. The current...
, and IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
, in addition to other awards. 1UP.com
1UP.com
1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
named Scribblenauts their E3's "Most Innovative" title. X-Play
X-Play
X-Play is a TV program about video games, known for its reviews and comedy skits...
gave the game its E3 "Best Original Game" and "Best Handheld Game" awards. Ars Technica
Ars Technica
Ars Technica is a technology news and information website created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games. Ars Technica is known for its features, long articles that go...
considered the game as the show's "Most Pleasant Surprise". Joystiq
Joystiq
Joystiq is a video gaming blog founded in June 2004 that has since become one of the most successful sites within the Weblogs, Inc. family of weblogs. It is the centerpiece of WIN's own network of video gaming blogs, which also includes a blog dealing specifically with the popular MMORPG World of...
performed a ten-word test of the game, and found only one word, "plumbob", was not yet present in the game, but were promised it would be in the final version. Part of the success at E3 was considered partially due to the inclusion of then-recent Keyboard Cat
Keyboard Cat
Keyboard Cat is an Internet meme. It consists of footage from 1984 of "Fatso", a cat owned by Charlie Schmidt of Spokane, Washington, wearing a blue shirt and "playing" an upbeat rhythm on an electronic keyboard. In reality, Fatso was manipulated by Schmidt...
Internet meme, which led to a grassroots
Grassroots
A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...
-type excitement about the game at the convention. Adam Sessler
Adam Sessler
Adam Donovan Sessler is co-host of X-Play on G4 with Morgan Webb and, as of December 17, 2008, editor-in-chief of G4's game content for the network. He is the only remaining television personality from the G4's origin network ZDTV.-Background:Sessler was born in Berkeley, California...
of G4 TV believed that Scribblenautss E3 success was from being a small but successful game from a small company in contrast to numerous other premier titles from other major developers and publishers that have become standard for the convention, such that the uniqueness of everything about the game made it the standout title of the show. Scribblenauts was given a much more predominate display in Warner Bros. Interactive's booth at the next major convention, the 2009 Comic-Con International
Comic-Con International
San Diego Comic-Con International, also known as Comic-Con International: San Diego , and commonly known as Comic-Con or the San Diego Comic-Con, was founded as the Golden State Comic Book Convention and later the San Diego Comic Book Convention in 1970 by Shel Dorf and a group of San Diegans...
.
Entertainment Software Rating Board
The Entertainment Software Rating Board is a self-regulatory organization that assigns age and content ratings, enforces industry-adopted advertising guidelines, and ensures responsible online privacy principles for computer and video games as well as entertainment software in Canada, Mexico and...
's attempt to describe the "cartoon violence" and "comic mischief" within the game as to grant it an "E10+" rating. The ESRB's description includes possible examples of the game's level of violence as "a club can be used to hit an animal; steak can be attached to a baby to attract lions; rockets can be lobbed at a man". In a post at NeoGAF
NeoGAF
NeoGAF is an internet forum that discusses video games, founded as an adjunct to , a video game news site. Since April 4, 2006, the site has been independently hosted and administered....
within a thread dedicated to the game, user "Feep" relayed the experience of discovering during E3 that he was able to go back in time with a time machine
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
to collect a dinosaur
Dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...
in order to defeat an army of robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
zombie
Zombie
Zombie is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli...
s that could not be defeated with regular weapons. The story, as memorialized as "Post 217", has led to 5th Cell artist Edison Yan creating a desktop wallpaper image of the story, in appreciation of the positive fan response to the game, and the terms "Post Two One Seven", "Feep", and "Neogaf" have been included as summonable objects in the game. The image has been used as promotional material, appearing as an insert poster for the Italian version of Official Nintendo Magazine. Slaczka credits the word-of-mouth popularity of "Post 217" for part of the game's success at E3, and noted that he had contacted Feep to gain his permission to include "Feep" (appearing as a robot zombie) within the game. The NeoGAF forums proceeded to expand on their praise for the game by creating a series of avatar
Avatar (computing)
In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...
s of video game and other related characters (which will not otherwise appear in the game due to trademark issues) for their forums inspired by Yan's art design, and even some of the members that created the avatars were contacted to work in the second game, Super Scribblenauts
Super Scribblenauts
Super Scribblenauts is an emergent action puzzle game developed by 5th Cell and published by WB Games for the Nintendo DS handheld game console. The game was released in October 12, 2010...
. Yan himself has drawn several more avatars in the same style for other games such as Street Fighter II
Street Fighter II
is a competitive fighting game originally released for the arcades in . It is the arcade sequel to the original Street Fighter released in and was Capcom's fourteenth title that ran on the CP System arcade hardware...
and Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII
is a role-playing video game developed by Square and published by Sony Computer Entertainment as the seventh installment in the Final Fantasy series. It was originally released in 1997 for the Sony PlayStation and was re-released in 1998 for Microsoft Windows-based personal computers and in 2009...
.
Release
Scribblenauts was found by reviewers to live up to the premise that the game was built on the ability to bring about nearly any object imagined into the game. John Walker of EurogamerEurogamer
Eurogamer is a Brighton-based website focused on video games news, reviews, previews and interviews. It is operated by Eurogamer Network Ltd., which was formed in 1999 by brothers Rupert and Nick Loman. Eurogamer has grown to become one of the most important European-based websites focused on...
considered the game "an incredible achievement", with its word database "so utterly complete in its collection of everything ever in the universe" and its specificness on these terms. Craig Harris of IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
asserted that "the developers fully deliver on [the] promise" of allowing player to summon nearly any imagined object, and, based on the core game alone, is an "incredibly versatile Nintendo DS experience". Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica
Ars Technica
Ars Technica is a technology news and information website created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games. Ars Technica is known for its features, long articles that go...
praises the game as "undeniably new and impressive" and urged players to support games that take risks with their innovation. Ray Barnholt of 1UP.com
1UP.com
1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
noted that while the game "isn't exactly the be-all end-all videogame" that it received prior to release, the game remains "unmissable" due to its sheer novelty value. The game's feature of forcing the player to consider different solutions when replaying levels was seen by Anthony Gallegos of Gamespy
GameSpy
GameSpy Industries, Inc., known simply as GameSpy, is a division of IGN Entertainment, which operates a network of game websites and provides online video game-related services and software. GameSpy dates back to the 1996 release of an internet Quake server search program named QSpy. The current...
as a "really clever way to encourage replayability while subtly upping the challenge".
However, reviewers complained about the game's poor controls, to the point that the implementation "almost kills a fantastic game". Reviews specifically commented how the touch screen is used both to manipulate the objects placed in the game and to move Maxwell; this would result in inadvertently having Maxwell walk to his death or to disrupt a delicately-prepared arrangement of objects prior to being ready to move him. Craig Harris of IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
notes that while one can direct Maxwell indirectly, the character would often fail to avoid or overcome simple obstacles, similar to troop movements in real-time strategy games, such that overcoming these issues requires a significant amount of precise controls by the player. It was suggested that while it was understood why 5th Cell opted to use the touchscreen in this manner to avoid too much flipping between the stylus and face-button controls, they would have appreciated the option for customizing the controls. The decision to use the touch screen controls was described by Walker as "possibly the most wildly stupid design decision of all time", and that if the movement controls were mapped to the face buttons, the game would have been a "beautiful thing". Walker also questioned the choice to have the game's camera snap back to Maxwell as soon as the controls for it were released by the player, as it made it both difficult to set up objects that were off-screen from Maxwell, and to watch the results of certain interactions, such as fights between computer-controlled characters, that occurred off-screen.
When it is possible to connect objects to other objects, reviewers found that finding the connection points to be difficult, and would often trigger Maxwell to move. Barnholt described the entire game as feeling like a prototype with its odd physics and not as polished as 5th Cell's previous games, though acknowledged the overall game is still an impressive feat for the small development team. IGN's Ryan Geddes criticized the game's poor controls and physics to require an amount of patience to overcome in order to enjoy the game, and raised concerns that the title was rushed to market after its overwhelming positive response from the E3 convention. In a postmortem, 5TH Cell's co-founder Joseph Tringali stated that they were aware that the controls would take "a big hit" from game reviewers, and attempted to work in a face-button control scheme, but would have not been able to complete it within the deadline set by their self-funded schedule. Tringali further noted that they did not spend as much time on the stylus controls earlier in development, and would have considered sacrificing another feature, like the Nintendo Wi-Fi, to improve them.
Reviewers also identified some unexpected behavior from some objects or combinations of them, leading to a inconsistency in the difficulty of the various puzzles. Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica
Ars Technica
Ars Technica is a technology news and information website created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games. Ars Technica is known for its features, long articles that go...
, in calling Scribblenauts a "a frustrating, often maddening game", described that he often encounters puzzles that, after trying several solutions that should have worked by common sense, he eventually happened upon a less logical solution that worked. Walker considered the puzzles range "between uninspired and simple and frustratingly obscure and fiddly". Many critics experienced that after getting stumped on a puzzle, they would often resort to playing around in the free play mode. Edge
Edge (magazine)
Edge is a multi-format computer and video game magazine published by Future Publishing in the United Kingdom. It is known for its industry contacts, editorial stance, distinctive anonymous third-person writing style, yearly awards and longevity....
magazine identified that the free play mode was more enjoyable as it masked the problems with controls, physics, and the general structure of the puzzle game that followed it, and considered what improvements in these modes could be made to create an experience closer to that of LittleBigPlanet
LittleBigPlanet
LittleBigPlanet, commonly abbreviated LBP, is a puzzle platformer video game, based on user-generated content, for the PlayStation 3 first announced on 7 March 2007, by Phil Harrison at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California...
. In particular for the action levels, reviewers found that they would be less likely to explore alternate solutions and fall into the pattern of using the same set of objects, making these levels repetitive towards the end. On the other hand, the puzzle levels were well-received; Andrew Reiner of Game Informer
Game Informer
Game Informer is an American-based monthly magazine featuring articles, news, strategy, and reviews of popular video games and associated consoles. It was formed in August 1991, when FuncoLand started publishing a six-page magazine, free in all its retail locations...
stated the time spent while solving the puzzle levels was when his "creative juices were joyously sapped". The presence of the "Ollars" currency system allows players to skip levels they found difficult. Kurchera also noted that with some puzzles, the game is often better played with others, including young children, as the combination of imaginative ideas will likely eventually stumble upon a solution. Simon Parkin of Game Set Watch agreed, believing the game is best enjoyed when one thinks like a child as "free of the dry, efficient logic of adulthood, a child’s imagination also opens the game up in ways beyond most adults’ reach". Seth Schiesel of the New York Times considers the ultimate experience of the game a let-down after the E3 hype due to the controls and obfuscation of the puzzles, and though it was not a "great game", he considers the concept a "great idea" that can be built upon for a possible sequel.
According to the NPD Group
NPD Group
The NPD Group, Inc. is a leading North American market research company. The NPD Group consistently ranks among the top 25 market research companies in the independent Honomichl Top 50 report, which the media and the research industry acknowledge as a credible source of information on the market...
, Scribblenauts sold 194,000 units in the United States during September 2009, following Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days in top Nintendo DS sales. The game also showed strong sales during December 2009, becoming the 16th best selling game of that month in North America. By February 2010, the game had sold more than one million units worldwide. It was the 5th best-selling Nintendo DS game for 2009 in North America and the 1st best selling 3rd party game on DS.
Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
named Scribblenauts the 7th best video game of 2009. Scribblenauts won the "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming", "Portable Game of the Year", and "Outstanding Achievement in Portable Game Design" awards, and was nominated for the "Casual Game of the Year" award for the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences , founded in 1996, is a non-profit organization that promotes computer and video game entertainment with the annual D.I.C.E. Summit event, where its Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony has been held annually since 1998...
. The game won "Innovation" and "Best Handheld Game" at the 10th annual Game Developers Choice Awards
Game Developers Choice Awards
The Game Developers Choice Awards are annually presented by the Game Developers Conference for outstanding game developers and games.Introduced in 2001, the Game Developers Choice Awards were preceded by the Spotlight Awards, which were presented from 1997 to 1999.The 2009 award presentation was...
.
Controversy
After the game's release it was the discovered that the word "sambo" creates an image that looks similar to a watermelonWatermelon
Watermelon is a vine-like flowering plant originally from southern Africa. Its fruit, which is also called watermelon, is a special kind referred to by botanists as a pepo, a berry which has a thick rind and fleshy center...
, which created a minor controversy, since sambo is considered a racial slur against black people
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
(popularized by the children's book Little Black Sambo
Little Black Sambo
The Story of Little Black Sambo is a children's book written and illustrated by Helen Bannerman, and first published by Grant Richards in October 1899 as one in a series of small-format books called The Dumpy Books for Children....
) and watermelons have historically been used in negative stereotypes against African Americans.
The controversy was only reported on by a few gaming blogs, most notably of which was Kotaku
Kotaku
Kotaku is a video games-focused blog. It is part of Gawker Media's "Gawker" network of sites, which also includes Gizmodo, Deadspin, Lifehacker, io9 and Jezebel. Named to CNET News' Blog 100, Kotaku is consistently listed in the top 40 of Technorati's Top 100...
, and was not widely picked up by gaming press or mainstream media. Slaczka stated that "sambo" is a Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
term for a fig leaf gourd
Cucurbita ficifolia
Cucurbita ficifolia is a type of squash grown for its edible seeds, fruit, and greens. Although it is closely related to other squashes in its genus, it shows considerable biochemical difference from them and does not hybridize readily with them....
as used in fanesca
Fanesca
Fanesca is a soup traditional to Ecuador. Its components and preparation vary from one region of the country to another, if not from one family to another. It is typically prepared and served only in the week before Easter...
, and that the watermelon image was due to reusing art within the game, a practice which occurred liberally throughout the game to save space on the DS cartridge; Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku
Kotaku
Kotaku is a video games-focused blog. It is part of Gawker Media's "Gawker" network of sites, which also includes Gizmodo, Deadspin, Lifehacker, io9 and Jezebel. Named to CNET News' Blog 100, Kotaku is consistently listed in the top 40 of Technorati's Top 100...
noted that the gourd and a watermelon do share a similar appearance and that of the 22,802 word list the game has, no other racial terms (not just for African-Americans, but all ethnic groups) were found. Warner Bros. Interactive apologized and stated that they "deeply regret the unfortunate oversight" for the depiction of the word in the game.