Potential Gamer

Having heard about a magic game where anything you type becomes an object, and also having the mental age of a five year old, naturally the first thing I tried when I got my hands on Scribblenauts was the word “poo”. Disappointingly, it wasn’t in the game’s dictionary (too obscene, apparently). However, since I spent the next 5 minutes throwing cupcakes at cheerleaders, driving a sports car into a pond, and trying to start a fight between a rabbit and a guinea pig, the game should probably be forgiven.

Scribblenauts is essentially one massive bank of 2D objects to experiment with. There is a main character who you’re supposed to lead through levels by solving puzzles, but it’s much more fun just to mess around. Black holes, jet packs, God (the beardy white-robed one, not Allah, in case you’re wondering), sniper rifles, monsters, animals, household objects, and just about anything you can think of have all been painstakingly coded into the game as comprehensively as possible.

Despite the technical achievement, I doubt that Scribblenauts will be a big success with those who would love its whimsy the most: casual gamers. I think it would work better as a java/flash game that could be enjoyed as a humorous time killer in the office with a colleague, rather than the hard sell of a full price retail title for the Nintendo DS.

The promise of Little Big Planet is echoed in Scribblenauts, appearing to be an experience that can be appreciated by die-hard gamers and “potential gamers” alike but, as with Little Big Planet, success will depend on effective advertising to show off the unique and cool bits, instead of the vague marketing that usually leaves such titles stranded on the shelves in GAME. Little Big Planet, despite receiving a plug on Jonathan Ross’ show and being narrated by Stephen Fry, didn’t take the world by storm the way optimistic gamers seemed to think it would, and Scribblenauts is so far sneaking even more deeply under the radar.

In the time between now and the UK release on October 9th, perhaps word of mouth can mount a wave of excitement. (It has already been namedropped on xkcd, in typically cute/mawkish style.) The most likely outcome is that the game becomes a gimmicky cult curiosity, which everyone wants to “just have a go on”, but not actually buy. If this proves to be the case, then the concept’s best chances for massively mainstream penetration might be in a browser-based clone knocked up by a few enterprising coders as a labour of love. However, at over 22,000 objects in the game dictionary, that would be one mighty huge labour of love.

In a spirit of optimism for seeing the ‘type anything and it appears’ concept migrate to other formats I leave the last word to 5TH Cell Creative Director Jeremiah Slaczka, “This is our big last hurrah for DS games. [...] We’re now going to move on to consoles in the next year. [...] our focus is definitely going to be on console”. Make of that what you will…