Scribblenauts

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In the back of the South Hall, behind Square Enix and near the bizarre desolated children’s playground where Fear 2 is being shown (even though the game has been out for around a few months? Someone ordered the children’s-playground-themed-video-game-booth and couldn’t return it), were four Nintendo DS consoles playing a game that totally captured our hearts here at E3 this evening: 5th Cell’s charming and hilarious Scribblenauts. On the other side of the jump you can learn more, including a VIDEO.

5th Cell, the company behind Lock’s Quest and Drawn to Life, have made a puzzle game where our hero, a cartoon kid named Maxwell (who is wearing headphones and something that the developer called a “Rooster Hat”), has to accomplish simple tasks, but, and here is the fun catch, you are allowed to get help using anything you can think of. Just type it in, and the item will appear. Want a shotgun? Type in shotgun. Will a black hole come in handy? It is yours to do with as you need. Need a Certified Public Accountant? THERE SHE IS AND SHE IS SMILING. To be 100% honest, I didn’t play the main puzzle levels of the game, that’ll be for tomorrow. Before I could start playing, former 1up staffer and frequent podcaster Nick Suttner sidled up and produced a list of words that he wanted to test in the game. The developers have actually allowed, at least in the demo, for the ability to mess around in an empty world with the library of objects that are playable, and so Nick Suttner, Travis and I saw what was what. You can see a video of this here:

Doesn’t this look AMAZING? Nick was telling us in the video that he typed in Death, and Death appeared and started to torment poor Maxwell. So, Nick typed in “God” and God came and fought Death. Death won? So. That settles that. One of the game’s lead designers came over and showed off some more fun touches – a time machine can be used to travel back to Camelot, and the full Moon can be used to make the “villain” change into a vicious werewolf. Who attacks Maxwell. So, I armed him with a sword, and they battled. YES this is as awesome as it sounds. The vocabulary was quite expansive, and tomorrow we’re going back with our own list of words. Proper names weren’t used, and words that were copywritten (like Xerox © and Band-Aid ©) were also no-nos. Before I started, I watched a douchey businessman type in “whisky” [sic] which, of course, is a misspelling of what he wanted. Instead, he got the “whisky carriage”, which is absolutely incredible. Of course, the idiot business dude thought the game was wrong when it presented him with a charming gauche carriage but it was HE who was wrong so what an idiot, am I right or am I right.

UPDATE: Yes! “Whisky” is an appropriate spelling! But you should have seen this guy. He was the worst. This was after he had typed in “PENNIS.” Spelling was not his strong suit. His suit was also not his strong suit.

Tomorrow I’m going to go back and actually play more puzzles – in the only one I saw, Maxwell had to grab a star at the top of the stage but it was quickly retracted as he got closer. I suggested a ladder, but it wasn’t tall enough. Travis suggested a jetpack, which was perfect. But that is one of the many, many ways that I bet you can probably get it. It’s all up to your…imagic-ination. Scribblenauts. This game is awesome. And it is coming out in the fall.