Around the time of its release on the DS, Scribblenauts was one of my most anticipated games. The core concept of a game that lets you conjure up anything you can think of in order to solve a puzzle seemed brilliant to me. Thanks to its core concept, the game and its sequel became smash hits. However, due to it being on the DS (a system I gave up on awhile ago) and due to some complaints about the game’s unwieldy controls. Despite that, I’ve always wanted to give it a shot if the platform and price were right.
To my surprise, 5th Cell recently released Scribblenauts Remix on iOS for the price of $4.99. I was all over it in a heartbeat. Did it live up to my expectations?
If you haven’t followed the history of Scribblenauts, let me give you a quick rundown of what it’s about. It’s a puzzle game where you, as Maxwell, are dropped into a number of different scenarios where the end goal is to get the star. Your tools for getting through the scenario? Virtually anything you can imagine. Well, at least one of the 22,000+ nouns you can think of that can be modified with a number of different adjectives. Want to get the star out of the tree in the first level? You could chop it down with an axe. Or use a ladder. Or use a flamethrower and burn it down. If you want to go nuts, the opening screen is essentially a playground for you to create anything you want. If you ever wondered who would win in a fight between God and Dracula, you can find that out before you even formally start the game.
The creative possibilities at hand is secret sauce behind Scribblenauts fun-factor. Many of the levels have countless numbers of ways you can tackle them, which can be really fun to figure out. One of my favourite moments occurred in a level where I was asked to save two people from a zombie attack. To save them, I set up a wall between the zombies and the people, then pinned the zombies between the wall and a fire. After that, I put a bomb on the head of one of the zombies. When the zombie got close to the fire, the fire ignited the bomb and they all blew up. Some of the level designs are very imaginative and are just begging for your to play them repeatedly.
Based on my understanding of Scribblenauts Remix, it contains a mix of levels from Scribblenauts and Super Scribblenauts, as well as 10 all-new levels. Unfortunately, that leaves us with only 50 levels total. Having played only about two hours of the game, I’ve already seen all 50 levels and solved all but 4 of them. Making the package feel even slimmer is the fact that not all of the levels in the game are exciting. At its worst, the game simply asks you to drop items in the world and that’s it.
The game gives you two control options: default touch control or virtual analog sticks. I hated the default controls for moving Maxwell around, as it felt way more unresponsive than I would have liked it to be. Character movement with the virtual sticks is absolutely the way to go. Even with the sticks, controlling specific actions with items can be a lot more difficult than they need to be. At one point, I struggled for a good 10 minutes just trying to throw a banana peel into a garbage can because of how unresponsive the controls can be.
The other downer I experienced with Scribblenauts is that I would sometimes run into situations where the game exhibited some jankiness. Sometimes, you’ll have difficulty getting objects that would interact together in real-life behave as they should. In one level, it was impossible for me to attach a rope to this one item, even when the game told me to do it. I had to restart the level before it magically worked. In another level, I would correctly solve one part of the puzzle, but the game wouldn’t open the gate to let me into the next section of the level, making it impossible to beat.
A lot of the reviews for Scribblenauts Remix have been glowing. If I were reviewing this game on concept alone, this would be one of the greatest games of all-time. Call me picky, but I think that the execution of the concept has room for improvement. It’s still a good game, but not quite the one I was hoping for. If we get another Scribblenauts game, I’d love to see more levels, more creative levels, better controls and more overall polish to the entire product.
In Third Person 
I loved the idea but when I first played it I felt like it didn’t want to be too ambitious. Maybe because the DS has limited hardware but it would be really interesting to see it embrace what it could have done and ran with it but as it seems, the developers (5th cell) just wanted to make a small party favour rather than an amazing game. I hope that they make something like this for PS Vita, they will probably have more to work with on that platform with the touch and giro and what not. Great review Jett, as always.