Scribblenauts Part 1: Lessons in Problem Solving.

Scribblenauts is an ingenious problem solving game.  You are a boy named Maxwell with a magic notebook and your job is to accomplish a serious of various tasks.  Whatever you write in the notebook appears on screen to help solve the problems.  Now, of course, there are some words that don't work, specifically vulgarities.  Although poop doesn't work, vomit and booger both show up.  So they tried to make it kid friendly, while still offering adults an immensely entertaining game of "How Imaginatively Can I Do This...".  Some tasks are very simple, like helping a woodcutter get a tree down.  Each level takes a little more effort as the difficulty gradually increases.

One could solve most of the games levels with a small amount of items used over and over, but gives you bonuses by making you think of alternative solutions when repeating a previous stage.  Occasionally the game's items ignore all physics and plausibility, and goes on to do nothing of what it should/would do.  Like if you summon a hurricane all that appears is a handful dark clouds and a pitiful amount of rain, but if you summon a tsunami, the water wave decimates everything on screen(including you) and starts the level over.

A massive amount of the fun in this game is just seeing what you can do with a random set of creations and still achieve the goal of the level.  One can dink around for hours, days, or even weeks with just making random crap appear on the title screen(Pictured at top) and see how things react.  There is a bar that limits the amount of things you can make, so you cannot make an infinite amount of money to bribe a cop or some such.  I discovered that I can only make 6 gorillas, but I found I could stack them all and ride a gorilla tower.

Anyway, here are some of the things I did...

Problem #1:  Help some guy cut down a tree.

1) Go the easy route- Use a chainsaw to cut it down.

2) Less conventional- Burn it down with a campfire.

3) An original idea- Weild a badger like an axe.

Problem #2:  Help get a lady's cat off a roof.

1) Lame way- Make a ladder and climb up.

2) Marginally less easy way- Spawn a pterodactyl and fly up to grab the cat.

3) An original way- Blow the house up with C4.  No house means no roof, so the cat will then be on the ground and reunited with a questionably happy owner.

Problem #3:  Get a soccer ball past a goalie into the goal.

1) Easy way- Run past him with the ball and shoot it in.

2) Less normal way- Drop a virus on his head and when he falls over ill throw the ball in.

3) Awkward way- Shoot the goalie with a bazooka then kick the ball in over his dead body.

4) My favorite way- Create a gold bar and give it to the goalie.  Walk away and explain to your new best friend, Mr. Leprechaun, that there is a real greedy douschebag goalie hoarding his(the leprechaun's) gold.  When the goalie is being beaten to a pulp by a very angry leprechaun walk the ball into the goal.

Problem #4: Trick or Treat with 3 kids.  Either scare them or give them candy to achieve the goal.

1) Easy way- Give them candy or create a ghost to scare kids.

2) Better way- Create the monstrous Shoggoth of the H.P. Lovecraft mythos(both Cthulu and the Necronomicon are there as well). The kids crap their pants and run like hell.

4) Morally ambiguous way- Glue a razor to some candy. The kids recognize it as candy and you still win!

Problem #5: Catch a butterfly.

1) Easy way- Use a net.

2) Better way- Throw a rock at it to knock it out of the air.

3) Best way- Glue an anchor to it so it can't fly off the ground.

4) Ineffective but hilarious way- Drop a meteor on it.  Everything dies(including you).

Problem #6: Clean all the garbage out of the park.

1) Easy way- Pick up the trash by hand and throw it in the garbage bin.

2) Fast way- Create a flamethrower and burn the everything in sight to a cinder pile.

3) Fastest way- Set off an atom bomb in the park.

Problem #7:  Knock over a pyramid of glass bottles.

1) Lazy way- Throw a baseball at the stack.

2) Why didn't I do this earlier way- Put antimatter above it and the bottles are sucked, presumably, into another dimension.

3) Laugh out loud way- Put a human cannon on the other side of the room and shoot the bottles with a clown.