Forget me Nauts

by Steve "Slurms" Lichtsinn

When I first saw videos of Scibblenauts I was amazed of the possibilities of such a game. With a library of words stretching into the tens of thousands, I couldn’t wait to see what my imagination would foster. I technically don’t even have a DS, my wife does. So with her permission, I picked up the game while we were out shopping one night and played it off that it was for “both of us” and that my daughter would get a huge kick out of it. She saw through the smoke and mirrors, but went with it anyways. I think she was getting bored playing Sudoku. So, for the first couple nights of my play sessions, I sat on the couch with my 3 year old hovering over the screen screeching and pointing and touching when she shouldn’t. Good times!

In Scribblenauts you want Starites. In order to get them you need to complete puzzles. In order to complete puzzles you need to think of objects that can be used to achieve the goals set in each puzzle. The game starts off pretty light, with puzzles holding your hand through thought processes to give a basic understanding of the games concepts. One of very first was Maxwell (you) standing between four people of various professions; a cook, a policeman, a firefighter, and a doctor. You are tasked with giving two of them objects that they would use in their job. I immediately thought, wow this is great for the kids! So I asked my daughter what each of the people would use, eventually giving the cook a spoon, and the doctor an otoscope upon my kids request. Yes, she three years old, and knows what an otoscope is (thank you television!).

We move our way through a handful of missions which become a bit more difficult. Not really due to the words needed in order to complete them, but because you have to control the character more than you’d expect from a game which touts its vocabulary. Oh well, no big deal right? Wrong. While I enjoy the fact that so much time was put into the library of objects and their respective animations, it seems that the control scheme was nearly overlooked entirely. You must control Max, move objects, and type your words in with the stylus. You move the screen with the d-pad or the other four face buttons. So wait, why didn’t they have you control Max with the d-pad, control objects with the stylus, and move the screen with the face buttons? Or even move the screen by holding down a button and using the stylus? What I’m trying to say is, trying to move Max with the stylus is bat shit insane. Later in the game you need to have some pretty finite control over your actions, and doing it with the pen is a little ambiguous to say the least.

While I think of myself as a pretty imaginative person, like most of us with soft, human brains I will usually do things in the easiest way possible. In Scribblenauts, that turns into using one of a few obvious things; a rope, a helicopter, wings, and a pirate. Most missions follow a routine of moving object/person “A” to spot “B”, or protecting someone from bad guy “C”. Four out of five times, I will use a rope attached to a helicopter to get the objects where they need to go, or I’ll drop in a pirate or two to ward off any baddies (btw Pirates are kick ass in Scribblenauts. I love killing Ninjas with them). The real problem isn’t the high vocabulary ceiling; it’s some of the words themselves. Some objects simply don’t act like you’d expect. When you have a span to cross, your immediate thought is to create a bridge. But the bridge is so damn small in the game it covers very few gaps. Then when you find a space that it does work, attempting to cross it is tricky because its obviously been designed with the physical properties of a cardboard box, moving out of the way if anything else even breaths on it. So what do you do, throw on some wings and fly over, or get into your helicopter and fly indefinitely. Imagination is a fantastic thing, but when a task is put in front of me, I’m going to find the easiest, most efficient way to complete it. When I want to put a nail into a board in real life, I don’t go to the hardware store and ask them what objects they have that can complete my task other than a hammer.

While I won’t disagree with people like Kelly that this game has potential for guided educational use, I will slightly disagree with Frank that this will expand your vocabulary by playing it. There is little educational value to the game from a single player experience. The game is not designed in a way that forces you to think outside the box and in no way does it add to any vocabulary that you don’t already have without outside assistance. But, if you were to bring this to a classroom setting and get involvement from students, you’d have gold. Until they see you screw up constantly on the zombie invasion level. Then they will just laugh at you.