5th Cell made a name for itself when it created Drawn to Life on the Nintendo DS a few years back, and strengthened its reputation with the surprisingly good Lock's Quest released about a year later. The small team has been working on what could be one of the most creative and most ambitious DS games yet. At least, that's what they want you to believe, and after playing the game at Warner Bros. Interactive's booth at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, I do. I really do. Don't let the simplistic visual style fool you: this is easily one of the best games at the show for any platform.
First, the concept for those who haven't been following the game: players control the game's character Maxwell whose task is simple: collect a star within the specific level. By himself he just doesn't have the means to acquire the star because they're placed in locations that are juuuuuust out of reach. So he needs help. Your help. Using your vast vocabulary of nouns, drop items in the area to help him get to that star. If there's a dirt wall in the way, call up a shovel. Need to get to higher ground? give him a set of wings.
The game has a vast amount of items to bring up, either by typing on a touchscreen QWERTY keyboard, or handwriting it in. It was difficult to come up with items that aren't represented in Scribblenauts, and if you misspell your word it will check your spelling and give you a choice of words that came close to your typo. And I checked "penis," smartguys. Not in the dictionary.
Objects also have behaviors attached to them. Watering cans can drip water, jetpacks can fly, shrink rays can reduce the size of other objects. Write Velociraptor and Stegosaurus, and watch the raptor get an easy lunch against that herbivore. Bring a werewolf in and watch him pass his lycanthropy to an innocent human. This game is all about discovery and using objects in creative ways.
The final version of Scribblenauts will feature a level creator that gives powerful construction tools to the gamer...and the creations can be transferred to other Scribblenauts owners via Wi-Fi trading. Unfortunately the E3 demo didn't have this mode implemented, but we could at least tinker around with objects with an open world "sandbox" option.
5th Cell's clearly having a blast putting in objects as inside jokes. Be sure to type in "keyboard cat" when the game ships later this year.
We'll go far more indepth with Scribblenauts after the show ends because there's so much to experience in this ambitious title that far exceeds all my expectations.
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