page_title: Scribblenauts
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Scribblenauts / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: Jeremiah Slaczka from 5th Cell, at the Game Developers Conference 2010. Français&#160;: Jeremiah Slaczka de 5th Cell, à la Game Developers Conference 2010.
context_page_description: Scribblenauts is an emergent puzzle action title developed by 5th Cell and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for the Nintendo DS. The game was released in 2009 in all regions except Japan, and in 2011 in Japan as Flash Puzzle: Maxwell's Mysterious Notebook by Konami. It is the third Nintendo DS video game made by 5th Cell, the first two being Drawn to Life and Lock's Quest. The objective of Scribblenauts, as implied by its catchphrase "Write Anything, Solve Everything", is to complete puzzles to collect "Starites", helped by the player's ability to summon any object by writing its name on the touchscreen. The game is considered by its developers to help promote emergent gameplay by challenging the player to solve its puzzles within certain limitations or through multiple solutions.
  Jeremiah Slaczka, creator and director of Scribblenauts, envisioned the game as a combination of solving life situation puzzles alongside Mad Libs. His vision was brought to realization through the "Objectnaut" engine created by 5th Cell's technical director, Marius Fahlbusch.
context_section_description: Scribblenauts was first conceived in the second quarter of 2007, near the same time that they had envisioned Lock's Quest. Creative Director for 5th Cell, Jeremiah Slaczka, stated that they were seeking counterparts of Nintendogs and Brain Age, games that had attracted a much wider demographic than most other niche games, that 5th Cell could develop. The concept of Scribblenauts came from a combination of a previous idea he had for the DS that was similar to Mad Libs and a dream of his. An example given for the Mad Libs was that players could write a Mad Lib of a "dog walking through a forest", and a dog would appear in a forest and walk through it. However, he realized the game would be tedious and that players would only be interested in using keywords. The dream was of being inside an Aztec temple and having to solve puzzles; one in particular involved three paintings, with the objective being straightening them and then moving on to the next room through a portal. While he thought it was a good idea for a game, he also felt that it lacked both a hook and replayability. He debated whether this would work best on the Wii or the DS, but later decided to combine the writing element with a puzzle element to fix the lack of replayability. Slaczka realized that the concept of the game might be considered impossible by other programmers, but found that 5th Cell's Technical Director Marius Fahlbusch felt confident they could create the required elements. The developers considered that the nature of the flexible and sometimes unforeseen solutions made the game strongly promote emergent gameplay.
  During development, Slaczka and the team tried to figure out what they could do with the DS hardware, trying to make Scribblenauts appeal to everyone. As Lock's Quest was thought of first, they focused on releasing that game first while beginning the development of Scribblenauts. The game entered beta around May 2009, and had numerous play-testers exploring the game. About half of 5th Cell's staff worked on the game. It was developed alongside the DS version of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter.
  Scribblenauts was originally developed without having a publisher for the game. Slaczka noted that unlike other games where the developers could complete and polish a single level to garner interest while work on the rest of the game continued, Scribblenauts needed to show support for its large dictionary from the start, making it difficult to promote the game. The company was in negotiations with a publisher in the early part of 2009, letting that publisher decide when it would be best to announce the game. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment officially announced itself as the publisher for Scribblenauts in May 2009. Slaczka noted that of the other publishers they talked to, they felt Warner Bros. was the best one, particularly due to their proximity to 5th Cell and their interest in the title.
  Scribblenauts was originally titled "Wordplay", but the team felt that this was "generic". The title Scribblenauts began as a temporary name that would be effective for pitching the game, but as development proceeded, the team couldn't think of a better one, so the name stuck and became the final title of the product.
  Konami published the game in Japan on January 27, 2011; this localized version features Konami characters such as Old Snake, Manaka Takane and the Vic Viper.
caption: Jeremiah Slaczka, creative director for 5TH Cell, upon receiving the Game Developers Choice Award for Best Handheld Game for Scribblenauts during the 2010 Game Developers Conference.
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