Scribblenauts Unlimited is the fourth game in the Scribblenauts series. The concept of the game gives it a limitless potential, although of course, the reality is it is a lot more limited. The game stars Maxwell, and we quickly learn about his parents, and then his 42 siblings. It focuses on one sister, who is slowly being turned to stone after Maxwell played a prank on an old man. The only way Maxwell can save his sister is to obtain starites, which is obtained by helping people.
So, the game has Maxwell traveling the world helping people out and then obtaining either starites, or shards which will combine to form a starite. And how does Maxwell help these people? Well, he has magical powers, anything you, as the player types, will be created in the world. Thus, there is theoretically many ways to help each individual person’s problems.
The reality is that usually these problems are so simple, as they only require one step or one item to solve. Most of the time, it is easy to know what particular item is required, and you can just create the most obvious item to save time. Although the most fun can come from creating unexpected items that the game still recognizes. You create items by typing into the in-game onscreen keyboard, and while the game can recognize a lot of words, there’s also a lot that it doesn’t.
The game plays on the bottom screen, rather than the top. So there’s no 3D effect during gameplay. You also lose the widescreen, having to play on the smaller square bottom screen. You can either using the physical buttons to move Maxwell and interact with people, or just use the touch screen. It’s better to use the touch screen as you’ll be needing to use it constantly to type on anything. The graphics are in a 2D sidescrolling style.
Since the puzzles are so simple, and there is barely any story after the opening cutscene, the game gets boring and repetitive quickly. You have freedom in where to go to collect the starites, as it opens up a few levels that you can do in any order. Getting a certain number of starites will unlock more areas, and the themes and backgrounds are different. Yet what you are never changes, so it doesn’t make much of a difference in the end.
There are ways that you could miss getting everything in a level, such as accidentally killing a NPC that gives you the puzzle, or you do something that triggers something else. In such cases, it is as easy as resetting the level. The game gives you this option and you even get to keep everything you had obtained before resetting. You can be as evil or experiment as much as you’d like without fear of permanently locking anything out.
Given that you’re just going from level to world as you complete the fill-in-the-blank puzzles, you make significant progress in a short amount of time. The story takes a bit over five hours to complete, although you can continue to do the rest of the puzzles which will give you a few more hours. Some of the more interesting puzzles are the ones that isn’t completed with just one item, such as one where Maxwell is running a gauntlet to escape, and you can get as creative or as traditional as you would like, giving a lot of options and a taste of what the game could have really done with its premise.
Despite being mostly easy, and sometimes obtuse, the game has a good sense of humor. It parodies a lot of things, from pop culture to other games, and it is amusing when you recognize what it is trying to recreate. That said, not even that can overcome the tedious of the slowness of typing using a stylus on the touch screen, and that’s sometimes you constantly must do given it’s a core mechanic of the game.
Overall, Scribblenauts Unlimited is an average game. It has its moments, but they are far in between. When you write something and it does work, it is exciting and fun. All too often though, it doesn’t quite understand what it wants you to do, and you must just go for the boring obvious answer. It can be too repetitive, especially after the magic wears off in the first hour or so but it’s a short game, so there is enough here to keep you interested in finishing it.
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