Day Forty-five: evening of September 16th 2009

So today, after charging up the battery yesterday, I played Scribblenauts on the Nintendo DS (Dual Screen). Now this isn’t a review. I haven’t played enough of the game, but I have gotten through enough to give a first impression.

What fascinated me when I saw a demonstration on X-Play, was the fact that you can write in a request for a device, it appears above your avatar, and then you attempt to use it to solve the puzzle. The X-Play staff playing the game went a little crazy, and typed in dingo, a dog appeared, next word melon, a yellow green ball appeared, then baby, which was eaten by the dingo (ugh). I tried flame thrower, ladder, jet pack, dynamite (the spell checker, yes spell checker, would not accept dynomite), submarine, helicopter, escalator, stairs, shotgun, rifle, raft, row boat, snowball, scuba gear, diving suit, milk, pizza (a piece showed up, not the whole thing-ratz!), by now you get the idea. The scope of the device database is large

But that made me wonder, what was the scope of the vocabulary? On X-Play some developer (?) said over 10,000, and I’m sure I saw a 20,000 plus vocabulary somewhere (I’m going to check the internet right now…That was fast, about two minutes). MTV states, “'Scribblenautes' recognizes 22,802 words, which is astounding and 5th Cell should be proud of that achievement” (5th Cell is the developer). With two hundred levels, and the ability to replay each level with different approaches. It might take a while to really finish this game. It’s almost like my New York Times Crossword DS game. It has a thousand crossword puzzles, and I only use it when I’m traveling, so it be quite a while before I finish that., and I know that when I’m done, I won’t remember the early puzzles.

So, I’m having fun with the game. The only thing that gets in the way with the game play, is the avatar control. There are times when my primary avatar, Maxwell, just doesn’t handle the way I envisioned. I swear I’m touching the screen correctly, but things don’t work right. Hopefully I’ll get the hang of the quirks of the controls. I’m looking forward to accumulating ‘ollars’ so that I can purchase new groups of levels, new avatars, and songs that the DS will be able to access.

One of the humorous aspects of playing the game, was my shift back into teacher mode, as I started to see the cognitive implications of the flexible problem solving underlying the game play. Once a teacher, always a teacher, I guess.

Back to the game, until I have to walk the dog.