I played Scribblenauts Unlimited as part of a duopack on my Nintendo Switch after it had been sitting in my backlog for years. I had always heard good things about the game, but I kept putting off playing it.

Scribblenauts Unlimited is a puzzle game that presents you with various situations where you need to solve them by writing a noun and adjective to create something that will help you. It's a unique game, and as far as I know, it's the only one with this premise.

It's incredible how many words this game accepts. You can write anything, and it will appear on your screen. For example, if there's a cat stuck on a tree, how can you solve it? You can call a firefighter or a superhero, or even use a UFO or a drone.

Another great aspect of this game is its language support. I played it in my native language (Portuguese), and it's amazing how a small game with such a vast vocabulary supports multiple languages. Because of that, you can use this game to learn English or another language while having fun.

There isn't much of a story here. You are only introduced to the main characters and their background as an excuse for the mechanics. Throughout the game, you control a boy who is trying to save his sister by doing good deeds for various people using a magical notebook that brings everything he writes to life.

The only downside for me is the Nintendo Switch version. It's not enjoyable to write things on the notebook due to the Switch keyboard. I tried the 3DS version for a few minutes before writing this review, and I can confidently say that it's much better than the newer version.

To conclude this review, I would say that Scribblenauts Unlimited is a game for those who are tired of playing the same shooter games one after another. It's a short yet enjoyable experience, perfect for you or your son.

Once upon a time, I made a pretty cool Ender Dragon which I posted to the Steam workshop. It got a pretty good amount of downloads and likes, at least relative to all the Ratchet & Clank weapons I also did. Flash forward a few weeks later, and I find a mod showcase on YouTube going over my own Ender Dragon. I click on the video just to find that there was no mention of me at all, not even the link to the Steam Workshop page. Little 12-year old me was so pissed. It was the first time I ever had my art stolen for clout, and I suspect it wont be the last.

Sights & Sounds
- The cartoon visuals are colorful and appealing
- The character designs are quite nice too. Very cutesy sort of game
- The music is passable but forgettable
- There's only a very small amount of voice acting, but it's competently performed

Story & Vibes
- The story is fairly minimal. Your sister is turning to stone, and you need to collect a magical crystal called Starite to save her. You collect Starite by helping people you meet in the world
- The game has a silly and lighthearted tone, but it feels kind of sterile. While I get that it's targeted towards kids, the complete lack of danger or any real conflict makes the game a bit boring to play, frankly

Playability & Replayability
- The game's central mechanic of creating objects out of thin air using your magic notebook is the main draw of this game. In theory, it has a lot of potential, but the basic limits of development time, memory, and creativity set a lot of boundaries on how far Scribblenauts can accommodate your creativity
- You'll constantly run into ideas for words (be they adjectives or nouns) that the game can't account for. There's a feature that provides suggestions for words if what you typed isn't available, but it's rarely useful
- In all, it's hard not to feel a little disappointed and frustrated when there's only a single mechanic and you keep bumping into its limitations

Overall Impressions & Performance
- It's a cool idea for a game, but it truly does begin to feel stale after only a few hours. The gameplay never really evolves in a meaningful way
- The game runs well, and I didn't encounter any bugs. Doesn't take much juice to run

Final Verdict
- 5/10. I'd only recommend it if the idea sounds cool to you and it's on sale. There's a few hours of enjoyment in this if you can keep yourself going, but 100%ing the game honestly felt like a bit of a chore that was as entertaining as checking items off a list

unlimited definitely beats out super in the graphics department. as always, the sense of humour is on point and the experience is very charming. additionally, it benefits from having an actual narrative with a definitive end goal. while this narrative is simple, it's an effective little piece of motivation for you to complete the numerous puzzles the game throws at you. and that's where our problems begin.

unlimited suffers a lot from mind-numbingly repetitive missions for a game as long as it is. there's a really strong imbalance between the smaller levels you complete for full starites being far too easy and the minor tasks you need to complete for starite shards being far too cryptic.

I feel like Scribblenauts has always been a franchise heavily carried by its concept, which I still find it incredible it was pulled of. This, alone, makes this game another fun entry in the franchise. However, I think it lacks as a puzzle game. Previous games happened to be far too complex at times, but this... is far too simple. And when it tries to be challenging, it ends up making no sense at times. I had a blast in the first few hours, but it began getting more and more repetitive as I kept going. I also played in Spanish due to it being my mother tongue, and the translation was questionable at times. Still, the core of Scribblenauts is still there and hasn't been lost, which is why I ultimately enjoyed Unlimited.

Scribblenauts is one of those games that is just fun no matter what age you are. Solving puzzles by using your imagination just spells fun for anyone. Unlimited tries to throw in an open world feel, which doesn’t feel so open, and has almost every item you can imagine in there. The problem with Unlimited is that it is literally unchanged with no new features and that is a huge letdown. Still worth a play through though.

There is a bit of a story with Maxwell and his sister who have parents that have a magic journal and pen. You can create anything with this, but one day Max uses it for bad on an old man. He puts a curse on his sister to turn her to stone unless he does good for people and collects Starites to free her. It’s a bit touching at the end and pretty cute, but nothing that will wow you. The story is fine and works for the game. Once you are set free you use your special vision to find people in each level who need help. They will appear gold, and main puzzles will have blue stars above them.

The people outside the main puzzles just require items to solve their dilemmas. You will read your clue at the bottom of the screen and try to solve it. Most logical things work like a ghost that doesn’t feel scary enough. Click on him and write in the adjective box “scary” and you solve the puzzles. Seems pretty simple, but there’s such a variety (over 100 in all) that it is just plain fun. I spent 2-3 hours in one sitting just flying through the puzzles, but then you get the snafus that kind of ruin it all. Some puzzles won’t accept logical solution or you get a bad hint. The secondary puzzles don’t get additional hints like main puzzles. The best thing is to get other people to help you who have a fresh thought process on it.

Over thinking, puzzles will probably make you the most frustrated in the game so it is a good idea to come back. Most main puzzles are pretty wacky and fairly simple and easy. For example, one area has you making dishes for certain people. A gamer comes in and wants pizza so you add three ingredients. Easy. Another comes in and wants to eat a phoenix…pretty weird, but ok. Add feathers, a beak, and wings and you’re done. The last one wanted to eat a motorcycle so I added a tire, gas tank, and engine. Very strange, but very simple, but it was fun coming up with all this stuff. There are a few that are challenging that require some minor platforming and timing, but there weren’t many. You can finish the story in just a few hours, but getting 100% is fun.

Scribblenauts still has colorful graphics with paper cutout style visuals and it looks nice. The physics have been improved, but overall the game is just pure fun. Sure it may be really easy, but there are those one puzzles where you just won’t get it or won’t take logical solutions. The biggest issue is that there is literally nothing unchanged from past games. The UI may have changed for PC, but that’s about it. I wanted to see some mini-games or an actual adventure where you have to think about objects to get you from one end of the level to the next using objects. What’s here is fun, but maybe not for $30.

it was okay. Considering the fact that the first Scribblenauts set a really solid groundwork and its sequel went on to improve upon it considerably with adjectives, this games new feature is the object editor, where you can create and share objects with other people. It's pretty neat! Unlike the previous 2 Scribblenauts games, where progress is done by going through levels on a level select screen, this game has one big open hub overworld to explore with people to help and things to do as well as the puzzle oriented levels. Consdering the fact that like 90% of my playtime in the prior games in this series wasn't even spent on the puzzles and rather just messing around in the sandbox area, it makes sense to expand that and make the whole world a sandbox. My only major complaint is that a lot of the puzzles are pretty boring, even the more involved ones. The first half of the game has puzzles that basically tell you the answer before they even begin, and the second half of the game just has really long winded multi-segmented puzzle chambers. It makes the act of actually progressing through the game kind of meh tbh. The Wii U port also has nintendo characters that you can create, which sounds cool except for the fact that they really can't do anything or be used in any meaningful way in the puzzles so they might as well not be there imo. There's also up to 4 player multiplayer which sounds cool but I wasn't really able to try. Definitely fun in the "mess about in the sandbox and make goofy stuff in the object editor" kind of way, but I was personally bored by most of the actual puzzles the game contains.