How to Play Scribblenauts

Scribblenauts is now available for iPhone. Originally released for the Nintendo DS, a sort of greatest hits version of Scribblenauts now only costs a few pounds on the Apple App Store.

I’ll assume you just stopped reading to go and buy it, and this is now three hours later. You have completed all the levels. Unfortunately, I have something unpleasant to tell you: you played it wrong. Let me tell you how you should have played it.

The true glory of Scribblenauts is the same as in real life. You have to become really good at just one thing. One skill that you excel at. A niche.

Plumbers are good at plumbing. Gardeners are good at gardening. Doctors are good at having cold hands. Footballers are good at cheating on their wives.

In Scribblenauts, you can summon any object you wish to try to complete puzzle-like 2D levels. In the end, it becomes too simple.  The main test is jumping through the hoop of figuring out what exactly it is that the designers want you to create in a given context. What you have to do to truly make the most of Scribblenauts is train yourself to solve solutions using a pre-conceived “special skill”.

My special skill is velociraptors.

Anyone can complete Scribblenauts. However, only a gifted few have the nous to best the game using velociraptor-based solutions wherever possible. It’s like speed-running, without the speed and the running, and with more velociraptors.

Prepare the Schoolhouse for a new year? Velociraptors. Help with the pit-stops? Velociraptors. Give the workmen their tools? Velociraptors? Velociraptors. Velociraptors, velociraptors, velociraptors.

Now, granted, some problems are not easily solved by the enthusiastic application of velociraptors.

It is a big challenge.

What you’ve got to do is mix it up. Work around the problem, whilst staying true to yourself.

Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. There are many types of velociraptor.

When pursuing velociraptor-based strategems, you will quite naturally often find yourself under threat from rampaging hordes of velociraptors. When this inevitably occurs, may I recommend the anti-velociraptor turret?

So, find your own way. You can’t be the velociraptor guy. That important position in society has already been ably filled. Figure something else out.