For those of you who haven’t gotten a chance to play any of the Scribblenauts games, they are a ton of fun. Maxwell is a young boy with a magic notebook that lets him create anything he writes or modify existing things with adjectives. The object of the game is to solve puzzles creatively. For example, in one puzzle, there was an injured person who needed to get to an ambulance. I could have selected him and added the “floating” adjective, and then create a rope to pull the floating injured man along. I could have made an ambulance and driven him to the other ambulance. Instead, I made him “portable” and just carried him.
Scribblenauts Unmasked answers the question, what would happen if Maxwell was in the DC universe. Sure, no one was asking the question, but the answer is here. It would be fun. Basically, you can create anything and anyone you want in the DC universe. At one point, I had about 7 different versions of Superman running around and fighting bad guys. There was Regular Superman, Earth 2 Superman, Red Son Superman, the first appearance of Superman, and a few more. The result is a slightly directed DC sandbox with all the toys. All of them.
The gameplay loop is simple. You arrive in an area like Gotham City, Metropolis, or Central City. You help random characters with even more random tasks, like helping an antelope in the middle of the Central City find something to help keep him safe from the lion nearby. I gave the antelope a gun and watched him shoot the lion. Then, you play a relatively straightforward short mission to progress the story. As simple as this is, it is fun. I enjoyed myself while solving the silly missions in the silliest ways I could imagine. By the way, if Wonder Woman ever asks you to magically create a disguise for her, the correct answer is to make her a mustache.
This is not the most complex game around, and I am not sure that I will go back to it now that I have finished it. I think that this is a deeply charming game with a lot of appeal for younger players, and I highly recommend it for them. Solving the puzzles is a ton of fun, and the story is charming as heck.
Four Supermen out of Five
