Scribblenauts (video game)

Scribblenauts is an emergent puzzle action video game 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 (from a database of tens of thousands) 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. Objectnaut allowed for a data driven approach, and a significant portion of the development time was spent researching nouns and their properties, and categorizing them into the Objectnaut database. This, along with the simple art designs of 5th Cell's Edison Yan, allowed for the team to easily add new words to the database without expending much effort to program new behavior.
Scribblenauts was first shown in a playable form at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, and became a sleeper hit, winning several "Best of Show" awards, being the first portable console title to win such praise. Reviewers believed that 5th Cell delivered on their promise to allow nearly any possible object to be created for use in Scribblenauts, but also lamented that the choice of controls in the game hampered their full enjoyment of the title. The success of the title has led to a number of sequels including Super Scribblenauts, Scribblenauts Remix, and Scribblenauts Unlimited. The series has sold over 13 million copies.
Category:Video Games