Scribblenauts unlimited: Summon words to conjure Lovecraftian horrors

This was given to me by a good friend of mine. He, much like a lot of other people I know adores this game. I did hear quite a bit about Scribblenauts before playing it and was looking forward to playing it. Well now that I have finished the story I would like to chat about it.

Scribblenauts has a very simple story with a simple but universal message about kindness and helpfulness. Maxwell and his sister Lily are two children who love to cause mischief. The two have a magic notebook from their parents that can create anything they write down. This makes them become spoiled as a result. That all changes when they trick an old man to eat a rotten apple, the old man curses Lilly to slowly turn to stone with the only cure being Starite; magic stars that manifest when people are helped. It is up to Max to help people so he can save Lilly from becoming a stature and learning charity in the process. That is the entire story I can give without going into spoilers. It is nice, to the point and gives a good message for all children and adults.

Gameplay is also simple; it is a sidescroller with some light platforming in some levels, none of it is too difficult making it available for everyone. You control Maxwell with either the mouse or keyboard and you type nouns or adjectives as needed. This game is solely a puzzle game where you are creating the puzzle pieces. The game is very forgiving to spelling errors which are nice for someone like me or others who struggle with spelling. You cannot write anything vulgar so do not bother writing stuff that would be under that classification. There is nothing really wrong with the gameplay asides from some of the puzzles being slightly uneven in difficultly but that is kind of it.

The graphics and art style are brilliant, everybody looks like and moves like wooden dolls and the back rounds appear to look like hand painted boxes, it all looks so adorable and so enduring. I could not help but feel warm and fuzzy when I was playing through it. There is always the problem when it comes to such upbeat and cheerful media is that it could become obnoxious and insulting to the children. Scribblenauts balances the cheerfulness out with the underlying threat that Lilly is going to turn to stone and it will be all his fault, it shows children that actions have consequences and not all can be solved easily if at all. This and the fact that some of the humour has a dark edge to it when you stop to think about the jokes but most, if not all of it will go over children’s heads.