When I walked into PAX this morning, the first thing that caught my eye was a small Scribblenauts display off in the distance. I didn’t see anything else for awhile. The demo had the entire first world unlocked, and I powered through 5 or 6 challenges. One of which definitely bested me. A lot. Click over for a play by play of my attempts.
The level, which I believe was level 1-11, had three flowers I had to collect and bring back to a cute old lady. One under a tree protected by a bee, another in a pond with a piranha, and the last over the water elevated on top of a cliff. Seemed easy enough. No bears, no zombies, just a fish and a bug.
Attempt 1: Walked over toward the bee, but stayed out of range. Called upon an exterminator, who walked up to the bee, and then fled in terror. The bee followed, stinging him the whole way, back to the old lady. When it was done killing the exterminator it promptly began attacking the woman. I clicked restart to avoid watching sting fest. Fail.
Attempt 2: Decided to give the exterminator another shot, but he again fled in terror. While he was being punished by the bee, I gave the woman a venus fly trap to defend herself. The bee soon turned on her, and she waved the plant in the air until she died. Failed again.
Attempt 3: Okay, time to take things into my own hands. Grabbed a butterfly net and attempted to nab the pesky bee. I had some trouble and ended up moving it in the direction of the old woman. Before things got out of hand, I grabbed a rifle and shot the bee. One flower under my belt. Moved to the piranha lake, which came sooner than I anticipated. Fell in, eaten, fail.
Attempt 4: Started with the rifle, shot the bee. One down. Moved to the edge, threw a canoe into the lake. It was a bit far from the flower, and the piranha was looking right at me, so I grabbed a paddle. In an attempt to move, I accidently walked off the boat. Eaten again, failed.
Attempt 5: Rifle, shot the bee. One flower down. Canoe, placed correctly, two flowers down. All that was left was the flower on the cliff across the lake. I conjured up a spring board to launch me, and gave it a whirl. Somehow, trying to jump on it, the board shot out from under me and hit either the old lady? or the third flower? I’m not too sure where it stopped bouncing. Either way, failed.
Attempt 6: Okay, spring board was promising, and the lady was pressuring me to let the next eager beaver play, so I figured I would cut straight to flower three. I shot the bee (for safety) and started constructing. I glued the spring board about half way up the tree, and put a ladder leading up to it. It took some doing to position it just right, but I got it right, and jumped on. Sadly I hit my head on the beehive above me, stopping me in my tracks. I was too close to give up. I jumped up within distance of the hive and grabbed it. Then ran away from the tree to dispose of it elsewhere. Something strange happened. The tree came with me, spring board in tow. As Maxwell ran the whole contraption (hive, tree, spring) flailed back and forth behind him. Apparently the bee hive was better attached to the tree than the tree was to the ground. I’m not even sure how the tree was standing to be honest. Demo over. Next time I’m writing ‘roots’ first.
I’m pretty confident that with a few tweaks I would have been sailing like a mascot at half time toward that final flower. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to wait for the full game for another crack at it. The good news? The game lived up to my extremely high expectations. If it isn’t on your must have list, it should be.
