Of all the big titles and flashy games shown at this year’s E3, this quaint little DS title was one of the few games I saw that managed to bring in a crowd of people commenting on and enjoying the demo when they weren’t even the ones playing. This was a welcome change to the usual scruffy-faced mouth breathers who liked to stand obscenely close to you while they silently watched you play with scrutinizing eyes awaiting their precious turn. By the end of my first demo session I had a handful of people gathering around the screen pointing and laughing at some of my stupid/confused attempts to solve the puzzle and I immediately knew that this game was going to be one that I would absolutely return to play again.

During my first session with Scribblenauts I played through a level in which I was tasked with grasping a star that was attached to a rope which would retract into the ceiling whenever I approached it. Each level starts out with a little clue to let you know what you’re supposed to do and this level’s clue was something akin to “Move it and Shake it”. What is important here is that whatever the actual hint was, it was enough to suggest to me that perhaps the solution lay in a dancing related object. This left me with no other choice besides the obvious: I would need to create a disco ball. After the fifteen seconds it took to call up the keypad and type up the word, there stood Maxwell the protagonist with a disco ball at his feet. Now, of course, given that the actual conflict being that I couldn’t reach the star without it pulling away from me the disco ball ultimately proved to be worthless, a fact which every passerby and even the demo handler pointed out to me amid their laughter. Following this brief snafu I summoned a lasso and a grappling hook and a minute later I had my star.

Prior to my hands-on time with Scribblenauts I was already impressed with the base idea behind it and the promised robustness of the game’s dictionary, but I was unsure if the title itself would end up being enjoyable. What I found was that it is indeed very fun to play not just for the sake of creating objects, but in the act of trying to be creative in how you approach each puzzle. After playing the demo I actually wished that there was a way to hook up my DS at home to my TV because playing Scribblenauts is exactly the sort of experience that is enhanced by groups of people.

And for the sake of showing some possibilities that result from the game’s vast dictionary, here’s a very interesting video: