5th Cell, creator of unique DS games Drawn to Life and Lock's Quest (both of which made ingenious use of the DS touch screen), have announced that their next project will be called Scribblenauts. The premise of the game is in the name, which has you solving puzzles by writing words on the screen.
For example, the objective of the game is to help Maxwell(the game's protagonist) collect 'starites'. If you're faced with a 'starite' in a tree then you could write the word 'ladder' on the touch screen and a ladder would appear. You can then use the ladder to climb the tree and collect the 'starite'. This isn't the only way you can get the 'starite', as you could write 'beaver'. This would spawn a beaver, which would bite into the tree and eventually make it collapse - bringing the 'starite' to Maxwell!
The game's creative director, Jeremiah Slaczka, says that 'the only limit is your imagination'. Right, but can you write anything and it will appear? How is this even possible, especially on something like the Nintendo DS?
There're more ways of doing it though obviously. You could write "axe", and then cut the tree down using the object you spawned. You could write "shuriken" and throw that at the Starite in the tree and knock it down. It's all based on real physics and interaction, so there's nothing pre-canned. You could write anything though; imagine you write "goldfish" for some reason, well a goldfish would spawn and sit on the ground. It wouldn't help you at all in that puzzle, but you could do it.
IGN: So you're talking about any noun, right? Any object, or item you can think of?
Miah:Correct, yeah. - IGN
I'm thinking that there may be some serious limitations to this game, especially if one were to write, for example, 'penis' (it's pretty much a given that 'vulgar words' won't be allowed). Wouldn't it take years to include every single object someone could possibly think of? I just don't understand how it can work. Even if the system can learn how each object interacts with each other, I didn't have a clue that the DS was capabable of something like this.
With that said though it does sound like an incredibly neat idea, and I can't wait to hear more about the game.
World Debut: Scribblenauts - IGN
|