Some (French!) video impressions

Thanks to (yet again) @Scribblenaut for this find. Gaming websites have the bad habit of showing us a little bit of everything in a game without actually showing us the game being played. Thankfully the French site GameKult has a bunch of videos up of actual people playing the game. I've decided to link them all here and do some minor impressions and speculations from what we see.



This video shows off the level editor quite well. It also helps ease my fear of us using up our DS memory too quickly. This video has a starite, a werewolf, 3 zombies, and a finally a chainsaw, and you STILL have room to add items.

One thing I am disappointed in is that the chainsaw couldn't kill the zombies. Clearly all zombie movies and games have lied to me! Good to see the game won't be SUPER easy, though. Maxwell just took a few hits and fell to the two zombie horde. Also it was hilarious to see zombie vs. werewolf action. I like that not all enemies are in cahoots with each other.



This is actually a very, very amazing video. It shows the final puzzle level for The Gardens, and I think we begin to understand what the developers mean by the difficulty level increasing.

The main goal here isn't too hard, but it's involved. It seems you have to pick some flowers for this young girl. There are several flowers and each have some obstacle you have to get by. One is guarded by a bee, another by some piranhas, and the 3rd is on a cliff by the water. For a puzzle level, there sure is a lot of action involved here.

The previewer does pretty well, and you can tell it's "real" as he thinks through the problem like anyone would. The gun kills the bee, which is a tad overkill, but whatever works! He then uses bread (I think) to distract the fish long enough to grab the 2nd flower, which was a neat trick.

The video also showed us that electronics CAN short out, as he ruined his little jetpack after falling in the water.

I do wonder what was up with the basket. Seems like either Maxwell or the girl kept kicking it over, knocking the flowers out. Was that an AI bug, or possibly a feature of it being an open basket? Not sure. But it wasn't pretty to see.

All in all this is probably my favorite video ever released so far. It feels very real, and it shows us a level that is a bit more involved and challenging, in addition to the fact we get to see the thought that goes into this. This level in particular will be hard to achieve "under par".



This next video shows off two pretty simple levels, both puzzle.

The first I don't fully understand due to the French explanation. It seems you needed to come up with an object to jump over that person...I guess. Here we see a bit of a glitch as Maxwell, while on the skateboard, clips through the ground. Though it was far from a graceful jump he still earns himself a star.

The next level is somehow more hilarious than it should be. Again, due to the language I'm not sure what the goal is, but it seems to be you have to spawn in 3-4 "farm" creatures. Here we're shown a pretty interesting mechanic of being able to "store" animals in the barn. Simply dragging and dropping them is all that is needed.

There's some goofy thing that happen with the animals, though. The chicken, for example, kinda just...sits on the farmer's face. Not sure what's going on there. Upon further inspection it seems the chicken is flying indefinitely. The turkey does this as well. Kinda disappointing that there's no difference between a bird and a semi-flightless bird. I wonder if penguins can fly...

Anyways, what makes this video utterly hilarious is the epic farmer riding sheep with chicken vs. crocodile. The chicken is devoured, though Maxwell is able to save the sheep (by dragging him to the barn) while the farmer kills the croc with a pitchfork. It was a small touch, but it's unintended scenes that unfold like this that truly show off the impressiveness of Scribblenauts...the sheer scope and depth.

Scribblenautic Fanart Gallery: Sunday Edition

It's been just about a week since the conception of this blog, and exactly a week since the last Sunday edition of the Fanart Gallery. Today we take a look at more work from Edison Yan, Lead Artist of 5TH Cell and all around Insanely Awesome and Talented individual. We'll also take a look at a bunch of Nintendo-themed Scribbletars.

I also wanted to mention I'm going to reduce the number of times I do this per week to just 2: Sunday and Thursday. That should space them out enough so I have a good amount of "new material" to play around with. These artists that are working on these are fast, but they're not superhumans!

Courtesy of Edison Yan

Yan finishes off his Street Fighter work and continues to blow me - and I hope everyone else - right the hell away. Wow. I can't help but picture a fighting game that makes use of the Scribblenauts style and premise...imagine a game where you have to fight a single opponent using any item you can think of...hmm. Though I guess you can basically do that in Scribblenauts already.

Courtesy of turk128 (Birdo) and Divvy (Ludwig)

I was a huge fan of the Koopa Kids back in the day. I thought it was great idea and was executed well. Plus each kid had a unique personality and style. I never did question the basic biology which would be needed to produce these "kids", but it's probably best not to think about it.

Speaking of not thinking about biological oddities, I never really liked Birdo. I think some people like him (yes, him) because he's "ironic" and weird. Eh. He's out of place and serves as a shitty counter-balance to Yoshi, and he does in most of the spin-off games.

Courtesy of jrricky

I'd like to think a lot of people know about Hotel Dusk. It's a pretty cool adventure game for the DS that has an amazing art style. Though the environment is 3D and colorful, the characters are hand-drawn, purposefully "poorly" animated, and black and white. Indeed, it very much reminds me of music video for Take On Me.

Regardless, I imagine it'd be tough for someone to translate a character from a game that is built on its style to ANOTHER game that's built on its style. Phew. Luckily jrricky was able to do it, maintaining the right colors and look of Kyle Hyde, the lead character of Hotel Dusk. He really did an amazing job with this one.

Courtesy of Divvy

If you don't instantly recognize these two then I strongly urge you to go back in time and relive your childhood. Seriously, this is important.

Anyways, Divvy continues to show us how naturally Nintendo characters fit into the game. Now join me in banging my head against a wall due to the fact Nintendo would never in a million years allow 5TH Cell to allow these guys in as easter eggs. Ah well. Hopefully I can summon a boy, green tunic, and sword. Close enough...

Courtesy of Versipellis

This is a sad clown. He has nothing to do with Nintendo, but he is so cute and adorable and heart breaking that...well...he's added anyways

September 15th release date confirmed by Warner Bros.

Mark your calenders, boys, we have an official release date.

The September 15th date has long been speculated as the actual date. We were told "early Fall" and sites such as Amazon began listing it on the 15th. Today Warner Brothers, producers of Scribblenauts, finally confirmed we were right all along.

Now that we have a concrete date we can finally begin counting down the days. And how many days do we have to wait? Well...

65 days, 1569 hours, 94174 minutes, and 5650479 seconds.

Better start counting.

Jackson does some rapid fire confirming

Creative Director Jeremiah Slaczka is unlike other gaming developers. He keeps tabs on his fans through online forums and every now and then actually answers questions people may have. I remember one memorable time during E3 when he was posting his reaction to Scribblenauts winning a whole bunch of awards...he was as pleasantly shocked as all of us.

Under the username Jackson over on GAF Jeremiah has been quick to answer any question you might have in this thread right here. Today Jackson decided to answer and clear up a bunch of things all at once. Take a look.

internet is in the game, plumbob is too, pretty sure usb stick is as well... maybe just as usb?

lolwut = epicness

There's 220 unique levels, the game is divided between action and puzzle.

also SHOOP DA WOOP ?? Seriously? You'd even test that? Awful.

So then! First, Jackson confirms Internet is still in the game (and we all raise our eyebrows at ONM for saying it isn't), as is plumbob (continuing eyebrow raising)...as is USB (please see a doctor if your eyebrow stays in this position for longer than 4 hours). Between believing the lead designer of a company with his repuation on the line and a gaming magazine...well, I'm going to go with Jeremiah. Because of this reveal that brings the list of "legit" failed words to 3.

DELTOID
ANTIMACASSAR
RUPEE

Wow.

Then Jackson goes on to confirm that lolwut (presumably the item in Scribblenauts) = epic.

No argument there! I do wonder what - if anything - this lovable doofus does.

Next he confirms the post I made last night before I went to bed. There are 220 unique levels in the game split down the middle between Puzzle and Action. Good to have official proof, even if it was kinda obvious.

And then finally he adomishes people for even attempting to see if SHOOP DA WHOOP is in the game.

...no argument there.

Action/Puzzle level split made a lot more apparent

Earlier tonight I was giving some thought as to how levels worked in Scribblenauts. In a previous post I mentioned that we know there are 10 worlds, and we know that in at least one of the worlds there are 11 levels. This leads to 110 levels, exactly half of the 220 promised. I suspected that wasn't a coincidence. And as it turns out, it wasn't!

A lot of people speculated there was a meaningful split between Puzzle and Action levels, but I was wondering if they'd go so far as to segregate the two modes. After all, in the E3 build both puzzle and action levels were side by side. I think. however, I have some proof that the two modes are definitely separate.

Here we see a 1-1 level. It's a puzzle level. Notice the puzzle picture by the world number

Then we have this image, snagged from one of the new videos. Here we see the "Get the starite out of the tree" level is also 1-1, only this time it has a little explosion symbol next to the name, most likely referring to the fact it's an action level.

This is pretty definite proof that the levels are split in a pretty big way. Thus there are two 1-1s, one for each game mode. I assume switching between the modes is simple enough, though I do wonder if it'd be possible to beat the game playing only one mode.

Finally, there's this last picture.

Here we see the level editor screen. Notice we have 2 pages, each with enough room for 6 levels. That makes room for 11 levels each. Every level shown here is a puzzle level (or it looks like), and we see the explosion icon in the lower right, suggesting we'd tap that to move to the action level selection.

So there it is. To be honest this is probably for my own benefit more than anyone else. It's been something that has been bugging me ever since E3. Thankfully it seems this mystery is solved. Most likely, of the 220 levels, exactly half are puzzle and half are action, and I'd be willing to bet there's an even split of 11 levels per world for all 10 worlds.

Kinda cool, eh?

ONM reveals their giant list...so what's in? What's out?

ONM finally was able to release the giant list of user-submitted words to try out in the game. This is the first time someone has put it to a very, VERY extensive test built by the community, so let's look at some of the words and see what made it and what did not. I think you'll be surprised on multiple accounts!

So first up, words that failed. I split them up by "proper" fails (meaning, they SHOULD be in the game, but aren't) and "improper fails", words that don't fit under the Scribblenauts rules and thus don't have to be in the game.

Not tangible objects

BOOBS (not an object) - Also would be vulgar
MEANING OF LIFE (not an object)
ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM (not an object)
PERPETUALITY (not an object)
ANNUAL - They probably meant the shorthand for an "Annual flower", but "annual" itself doesn't count as an object
LEG WOUND - Not really a tangible object or noun
GLITCH - Not a tangible word, though I do agree it should be in

Not in the dictionary

HAMMER OF THOR (not in dictionary)
DANCING BANANA (not in dictionary)
ONM (not in dictionary)
RAPTOR JESUS (not in dictionary, potentially blasphemous)
SHOOP DA WOOP (not in dictionary)

Trademarked or proper nouns

JEDI (trademarked)
DS (trademarked)
Joystiq
RUDOLPH - A proper noun. It'd only be icing on the cake if he were in, like Santa...

Words that are too specific or probably already have variations in game

SANDBOARD - Seems identical to a snowboard, which I'm sure is in
SHOVELWARE - Probably too specific of a word. "Videogame" is probably in
MISANTHROPE - Again, most likely too specific of a word. A misanthrope, like one of the -phobe nouns, is more of a human with a non-tangible way of describing them, which would probably be hard to represent. You can, however, spawn in a human and make him fear humans in the level editor
COULROPHOBE - Same as above

Proper fails

DELTOID - Spellcheck tells me this isn't actually a word...hmm. Maybe it needed to be "Deltoids" or "Deltoid Muscle"?
ANTIMACASSAR
RUPEE


So then...not too bad. Out of the 25 words, only 4 of which "properly" failed, and even among those 5, 3 of which have questions about them.

Now let's look at the items that DID make the cut.

PLUMBOB
USB STICK
INTERNET
SIBERIAN HUSKY - YES!
WALLPAPER
ACTOR
DESERT
GOGGLES
BANDANA
FINGERLESS GLOVES
SKI LIFT
FLANNEL - YES!
VACUUM
PEPPER (both the condiment and the vegetable)
COUCH
BANDICOOT - I didn't know this was a real word.
FLAG
HOSE
NAPPY (you can put it on him)
WATCH
TATTOO (makes a sheet of stick-on tattoos)
MUSHROOM
BOMBARD (makes a cannon) - I thought bombard was a verb...hmm
SEISMOMETER
LOBSTER
MAGIC EGG (same as a normal egg) - xd, what the hell is a magic egg?
EMO
DEATH
LIMBS
STARITE (but it's a fake one)
MAGIC
EVERYTHING - I wonder what this turns up
UNIVERSE
C4 (input CFOUR)
MELON
JUDGE
JEWEL CASE (but makes a Jewellery Box) - Makes sense
SD CARD (but makes a playing card) - Probably means it isn't it, so the game defaults to the generic "card"
CANVAS
SOLAR SYSTEM (but makes a star) - LAME AS HELL!
GALAXY - Yet this is in...?
PISTOL
LED
RICKROLL (makes Rick Astley appear) - Who promptly explodes. No, seriously.
PEANUT
CHEERLEADER
LASER SWORD (but makes a normal sword) - Makes sense
GUITAR
GLASSES
AISLE
TREBUCHET
I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER (makes a cheeseburger) - ...wow
PENGUIN
KETCHUP
STAPLER
DICTIONARY
SCRIBBLENAUTS (makes the orginal character design) - What weird wording...
5TH CELL (makes the developer's logo)
LOLWUT (makes his head huge) - Uh, what? Does he means the lolwut pear?
MORON (makes a dunce)
CHIMPANZEE
PENCIL
PAINT
BERET
SHOTGUN
CHAINSAW
TENNIS RACQUET
COMPUTER
GAS
SYNTHESIZER
CHEESE
REMOTE
CREDIT CARD -
SCISSORS
TWEEZERS
LAWNMOWER
FISHING ROD
INLINE SKATES
WASHING MACHINE
CARAMEL
STARFRUIT
PENNY FARTHING
TOAD
TSUNAMI
ABYSS
SPY (makes a Ninja) - LAME AS HELL
LOLLIPOP
MONEY
TOAST
CAMERA
BABOON
ZOETROPE


So as you can see, Scribblenauts already has a pretty robust input device. Even if you get a word wrong or you try to be too specific it spawns in what it thinks you want. All in all the testing was an amazing success. Tallying it all up, out of the 93 "proper" words that were checked, only 4 failed.

Not too bad. Not too bad at all.

Scribblenauts get a sort-of release date; multiplatform talk

Out of all the news breaking today we have two big pieces that I'd like to touch on that I feel are, above all else discovered today, the most important.

First we have affiliate @Scribblenaut figuring out (thanks to a Dutch website) that Scribblenauts will be released the 23rd of September in the PAL regions. This is 8 days after the speculated September 15th date for the states. I think it's safe to say the United States will see the game anywhere between those two dates, though I am thinking the 15th is the correct date.

Second, we have an interview that might scare some people while exciting others. Yes, multiplatform talk. To quote technical director Marius Fahlbusch,

Starlet developer 5th Cell has never thought of puzzler Scribblenauts as a DS exclusive, technical director Marius Fahlbusch has told VG247, and has confessed that the puzzler could migrate between platforms.

“The concept would definitely work on other platforms as well and we’ve seen gamers from very different backgrounds pick it up and enjoy it equally,” said Fahlbusch.

He added: “We’ve seen both kinds of gamers instantly taking to the game, the casual gamer that played a few games before as well as hardcore ones that play nothing but the latest titles on PS3 and X360.

“But we never limited ourselves to the DS as platform in our heads and we’ll see what the future holds.”

Personally? I'm disappointed in that. 5TH Cell has always been somewhat of a Nintendo loyalist. In fact, Scribblenauts wouldn't have even come to life if they didn't look at the DS and say, "Ok, what can we do with this?" Though I am excited that it may branch out to other consoles and support the developers, I gotta say, it would not be ideal. Once a game goes multiplatform some problems begin to come up. Some platforms become more favored than others, release dates and content begin to differ greatly. It'll be interesting to see what comes in the days ahead.