I hope role playing game developers are getting their hands on a copy of the Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts. Although Scribblenauts is a puzzle game, role-playing games could probably learn a thing or two from this quirky ingenious little game. You are faced with many different levels that contain very simple tasks you must satisfy in any way you can think of. That’s an understatement!

The gist of the game is basically whatever you item wish for you get. Say your playing a level where you had to get a cat out of the tree. What will you wish for, a ladder?… a rope?… a water gun? That’s one the wonderful thing about Scribblenauts, you can solve puzzles thousands of ways. The items that appear are functional as well. So if you did wish for a water gun you can equip it and squirt water. Once you succeeded in the task at hand you complete the level. A very nice feature in the game is if you complete a level 3 times in a row, without wishing for the same item you twice you get a gold star. This is by far the most addictive part of the game if you ask me. It’s hard not to play the game and not stir up some laughs.

I tried luring the cat with a humuhumunukunukuapua a, and what do you know, one appeared and it worked! Yes the game seems to recognize the most bazaar words you can think of. On one level I wished for a stealth bomber so I could fly up and pick a flower on a ledge. Being a database person myself, I imagine they had developers take a dictionary and create every single noun in the book. However, you are restricted from entering pronouns, suggestive or vulgar words, alcoholic related words, and copywritten or trademark words. Other than that the fun in the game is up to your creative thinking.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 9:22 pm and is filed under DS, Nintendo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.