5th-Cell
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5TH Cell's next game uses the Source engine
Jeremiah Slaczka, creative director and CEO of Super Scribblenauts developer 5TH Cell, dropped a tantalizing hint about the company's next project in a statement to Joystiq. "We're not ready to reveal our next original game just yet, but I can say we're using the Source Engine for it," Slaczka told us. Slaczka wouldn't confirm or deny whether this is the XBLA project mentioned last year. But if it's using Valve's FPS-friendly Source engine, it's unlikely to be a DS game -- and it's unlikely to be Scribblenauts. As for when we can expect to learn more about this mystery project: "Hopefully we'll have something to show people in a few months."
Super Scribblenauts gets a powerful, angry, vampiric Gamescom trailer
If the expansive dictionary found at the center of Scribblenauts left you bewildered, we're curious about what you'll think of the trailer for Super Scribblenauts posted below. It the game's noun recognition was indeed powered by black magic, its adjectives must be the work of Cthulhu.
Listen to Super Scribblenauts in style with GameStop's pre-order bonus
They're "fuzzy." They're "camouflage" -- or "polka-dot" or "grey," depending on which you happen to pick up. According to WB, they're "chic," "colorful" and "plush." We would argue that they are "loud" in two different ways. And they're also "free." Appropriately, there are plenty of adjectives to describe the Super Scribblenauts pre-order bonus, the Adjectivized Headphones. Unless you pre-order your copy of the game from GameStop, they're also "inaccessible." The headphones will be handed out (in the three aforementioned color schemes, randomly selected) with pre-orders of the game on its October 12 release date. And they'll totally look "awesome" worn over a Rooster Hat.
Super Scribblenauts ESRB description confirms mermaid-murdering computers
Were you concerned about whether or not you'd be able to create a man-eating bicycle in Super Scribblenauts? Parents, do you have a strict "no homicidal houses" policy for your kids' entertainment media? The ESRB has stepped in to offer a few (extremely) random examples of what's possible.
See and save on Super Scribblenauts at Comic-Con
Comic-Con is turning out to be pretty worthwhile simply for DS-related reasons. In addition to the exclusive Dragon Quest IX content, you'll have a chance to try out Super Scribblenauts, and save $5 on the game for your trouble. Warner Bros. Interactive will have demo stations for the adjective-enhanced adventure in its booth (#4545). Those who go to check it out will get an adjective of their own, thanks to a $5 Best Buy coupon to turn their own copies of Super Scribblenauts into cheap copies. The publisher released this charming artwork today as well, depicting some adjectivized objects found within the game. A plaid kappa! A wooden cat, in a furry cup, maybe? A tiny, striped, winged elephant! These are things that you can use in a video game to solve puzzles!%Gallery-97769%
Preview: Super Scribblenauts
Last year at E3, the game press lost its collective cool over Scribblenauts. We suspect we're headed for another collective freakout with Super Scribblenauts. Last year, it was the audacious, impossible-sounding concept of thinking of any noun and summoning it to solve a puzzle. This year, we've all had time to become familiar with the concept -- but the fact that the sequel has been refined to fix the one problem the original game had might be worth the renewed enthusiasm.%Gallery-95592%
Super Scribblenauts unpacking adjectives this Fall on DS
Start flexing those ... whatever muscles you would use to exercise your imagination. Warner Bros. Interactive today announced Super Scribblenauts, the sequel to last year's similarly titled puzzle-platformer. The DS game will hit store shelves sometime this fall. Check out the first three (tiny, tiny) screenshots from the game in the gallery below. As hinted at by the April issue of Nintendo Power, players will be able to modify the game's catalog of summonable items using adjectives, leading to complex creations such as "gentlemanly, flaming, flying zombies and purple, obese, winged elephants." That sounds wonderful, but we're more excited by the announcement's surreptitious reference to "upgraded controls." Does that mean we'll actually be able to walk to said lavender pachyderm without accidentally jumping into that adjacent pit of lava? We can only hope! %Gallery-93161%
Scribblenauts on Wii up to fans
If your major issue with Scribblenauts was that typing was too easy, you may be interested to hear that 5TH Cell isn't ruling out a Wii version. Echoing previous statements about the developer's openness toward additional platforms, creative director Jeremiah Slaczka told the UK's Official Nintendo Magazine that a Wii version of the vocabuladventure is possible. All you need to do is ask for it (and buy the upcoming DS sequel)! "I think a Wii version could happen," Slaczka said. "It's all about the fans - if the fans speak up and continue to buy and play the second one like they did the first one, I don't see why we couldn't make a case for a Wii version." The DS sequel -- which is still unnamed -- will be released this fall.
Renowned devs creating 'Big Name Games' for free WarioWare D.I.Y. DLC
Playing your own microgames in WarioWare D.I.Y. is great and all, but what if you could play 5-second microgames designed by your favorite developers, like 5TH Cell, Gaijin Games, and even Cave Story creator Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya? In the weeks following the release of the microgame creation suite, you'll be able to do just that. Every Monday from March 29 through July 26, Nintendo will make new microgames in its "Big Name Games" series available for free download through WarioWare D.I.Y. The first offerings will include the game Yoshio Sakamoto showed off at his GDC presentation, as well as a game from Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai. Team Meat and WayForward are also contributing games.
Flipnotes from the PAX 2009 show floor
During PAX last year, Nintendo asked any professional artists who happened to be there to create an animation in the DSiWare program Flipnote Studio. Now, the flipnotes from comic artists like Eric Jones and Christina Strain, webcomics artist Scott Kurtz, and 5TH Cell art director Edison Yan, have finally been posted in a gallery on the Flipnote Hatena site. Showing what can be done in a few minutes by a talented artist, and building on the excitement of a popular convention, makes this initiative a great promotional tool for the free app (and for the DSi in general), which is why Nintendo waited until six months after the event to release these!
Nintendo Power: Scribblenauts sequel coming this Fall
[GoNintendo] As evidenced by the image above, the latest issue of Nintendo Power reveals a sequel to 5th Cell's Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS. According to a report from GoNintendo, the magazine feature additionally details the game's release window ("fall"), that it will receive "10,000 more words" and "120 new and improved levels," and will have a focus on the use of adjectives. Thankfully, the report also notes intentions to improve the game's controls -- a major setback of the first outing. We've shot an email to the developers and will hopefully have more information on the game sometime soon. For now, you can check out the full magazine cover right here.
Scribblenauts was the #5 DS game of 2009
In its "NPD: Behind the Numbers" feature for January, Gamasutra included a chart of the top five DS games in the US for 2009. As expected, the list is dominated by Nintendo's evergreen first-party lineup; however, at number five was a third-party title, 5th Cell's Scribblenauts. WB announced earlier this month that the bizarre adventure puzzle game shipped over a million copies. It sold "over 900k for sure," 5th Cell creative director Jeremiah Slaczka told Joystiq. "The DS is a very different market than console, I think treating it as such helps," Slaczka said about cracking the DS market. "I think it's one of the toughest markets to sell on because the demographic is so broad: gamers, non-gamers, kids, adults, boys, girls. And unlike the Wii, it's even more limiting in power. Making a game that appeals to everyone is tough." And that kind of universal appeal is exactly what 5th Cell went for with Scribblenauts -- an approach that put them in some pretty exclusive company.
Noteworthy: Scribblenauts ships a million
WBIE announced today that Scribblenauts, 5th Cell's puzzle adventure game that spawns any object a player writes in, has now shipped one million copies worldwide. According to WBIE, which, as publisher, has an admittedly biased view of the situation, Scribblenauts has now reached "blockbuster status." Keeping in mind that the reported figure is one million units shipped (and not necessarily sold), it's still an impressive number for a third-party DS game -- especially one as weird as an adventure game that features puzzle solving through the use of one's vocabulary. How are other developers expected to rip off that formula?
Best of the Rest: JC's picks of 2009
Muramasa: The Demon Blade Muramasa appealed to me in a way that Odin Sphere didn't, thanks to an emphasis on combo-heavy sword action instead of planting and whatever. And the RPG elements that are left, like the sword upgrades and cooking, are not only fun, but simple enough that I can get right back into the game after a long break and still know what is going on. Also, I don't mean to be shallow, but the fact that Muramasa is the most beautiful game of 2009 helps me be positive about it.
'Tis the season for new Scribblenauts artwork
Click to download in Santa-sizeWe thought the Scribblenauts Halloween wallpaper was a one-off, an excuse to promote the game a bit more in the period immediately following its release. But, to our delight, 5TH Cell has delivered the Christmas present we didn't dare hope for: new Scribblenauts artwork by character designer Edison Yan. It's a Christmas miracle! Well, okay, it may not be miraculous, but it's really nice! We don't even care if it is a promotional effort to remind people to put Scribblenauts on their holiday shopping lists. There are also two new Christmas-themed screenshots in our gallery. In retrospect, it was a pretty clever idea to make a game that includes multiple holiday-themed items as part of its nature. %Gallery-39784%
5th Cell on Scribblenauts' control scheme, and more insights
In a postmortem article for Game Developer magazine (excerpted by Gamasutra), 5th Cell co-founder Joseph Tringali offered some inside information about the development of Scribblenauts. The control scheme, one of the major complaints about the puzzle-adventure title, was something that 5th Cell wanted to fix in a couple of ways. However, the developer ran into time and budget constraints. "We knew this was going to take a big hit from reviewers," Tringali said, "but we could only spend a limited amount of work on it. We discussed a secondary D-pad control option midway through development only to come to the conclusion it would take a single person 3-4 weeks to integrate it. On our self-funded schedule, that route was not an option." Tringali said that to free up time to tweak the controls, another feature, like online connectivity, might have had to be lost. But when those decisions came up, it was already too late.
Celebrate Halloween with Scribblenauts
If you're planning to visit the London Dungeon this Halloween, you may get a scare of some kind, but more importantly, you can also get an exclusive Scribblenauts level. An exclusive Halloween level will be distributed in line at the Dungeon from 12 to 3pm wirelessly. If you're not planning to go to the London Dungeon, you can still enjoy some spooky Scribblenauts goodies in the form of this wallpaper (1024x768, 1280x1024, or 1600x1200). It's full of creatures that we haven't seen before, including the Candy Corn Man and whatever that adorable giant eyepatch-wearing cat is. If you know the word that summons the Candy Corn Man, please, please let us know.
Scribblenauts achieves noteworthy 194K sales in September
In its first two weeks on the market in North America, Scribblenauts sold 194,000 units, making it the third highest-selling DS title in September, behind Mario & Luigi and Kingdom Hearts sequels. That's 105,000 more copies than Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars moved in its first month. We asked 5TH Cell creative director Jeremiah Slaczka if it met his expectations. "I didn't have any expectations," he told Joystiq. "I just hoped it'd do well. It's awesome for a completely new, original 3rd party IP on DS to do so well." Does this strong debut mean a sequel is guaranteed? "Way too early to tell that," Slaczka said. "We've only seen 2.5 weeks of sales." He told us that Drawn to Life, which went on to break a million worldwide, only sold 40,000 copies in its first month, with one more week of sales in that month.
5TH Cell's next: a 'pretty big' XBLA game
Well, okay, not next next. The actual next game from Scribblenauts developer 5TH Cell is Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter on DS, out October 27. In an interview with Gamasutra, 5TH Cell's creative director Jeremiah Slaczka revealed that the game after that will be the developer's first console game, a "pretty big" game for Xbox Live Arcade. "It's going to be really cool," Slaczka said. "We're very excited about it... it's totally not ready to be announced." Just think of how exciting it will be when it is ready! That's got to be ... more exciting.The full interview is really interesting stuff, going into the inspiration and early design of Scribblenauts, some discussion of emergent gameplay, and 5TH Cell's somewhat indie-like philosophy.
Mega64 uses Scribblenauts technology to change the internet forever
Being a blog on the internet, we're big believers in the power of commenters. Whether it's the beloved "First!" or the always refreshing "Slow news day, huh?," each and every person who enters a string of text into a comments field and hits submit has undoubtedly changed the course of history ... forever. Mega64, the comedic troupe with a taste for video games, has finally realized this and, in combination with the item-spawning gameplay of Scribblenauts, has created something that will change the internet forever. We'd go into more detail, but then we'd be taking away from the surprise. So, head past the break and see what's in store for the future of the intertron.
