Scribblenauts Showdown Review

The “Party Game” has had a very odd lifecycle, all things considered. Started out of nowhere, more or less, with the first of SEVERAL Mario Party games on the N64, they saw a spike in popularity on the casual-cuddling Wii and, as is well-documented, were mostly more garbage than that massive garbage island in the Pacific. This unsurprisingly mostly killed the genre (and several Wii owners, crushed under mountains of plastic peripherals), apart from excellent indie offerings like Duck Game and Nidhogg and the zombified, shambling husk of the Mario Party series. So it seems particularly odd for Scribblenauts, an action-puzzle series that has so far proved reliant on a keyboard, to throw its hat into this genre’s ring. But then again a reality TV star is President of the United States, so I guess anything is possible.

I had a list of apprehensions going into Scribblenauts Showdown – which may not mean much given I could very easily name my autobiography “a list of apprehensions” – but nonetheless, they were: how would the series’ trademark “type a thing, get thing” gameplay fit into a party game, let alone a game with no keyboard? Would the series retain its cheeky sense of humour and style, or “soul – and also its traditional puzzle-y solve-y gameplay? Would I be forced to use poorly-implemented motion controls, and get traumatic party game flashbacks like a Vietnam vet stepping on a dry twig? In a word: well, somewhat, kinda, YES.

To assuage what is probably the most common worry, the keyboardless typing is actually pretty functional and easy to use – press a direction on the control stick to highlight a group of four letters, use the four face buttons to select one of those letters. On paper it sounds awful – and on everything else at first it looks it – but it’s pretty quick to pick up and probably the best way this could of been handled. In terms of how the keyboard – and in turn the main component of Scribblenauts’ gameplay – is used, well…

Showdown’s gameplay is split neatly into two categories: “Showdown,” which houses the new party game modes, and “Sandbox,” where the old-fashioned gameplay is. Showdown mode, supposedly the meat of the game given the title, is, it must be said, not very good. The game has its priorities all wrong, pushing the new mechanics hard while barely mentioning the old ones exist; it’d be the The Rolling Stones opening for your mate from Year 9 who barely knew the chords to play “Smoke on the Water.” Let’s get down to it: you have 25 or so minigames split into two categories – “wordy” games, which make something of a slight effort to include the dictionary by giving you a slight advantage if you enter an appropriate word at the start (for example something fast for the racing game), and “speedy” games, which can’t be bothered and generally devolve into “waggle your joy-con this specific way the fastest.” In another PTSD-style Wii shovelware flashbacks, these motion controls are iffy at best. The single-handed controls for “speedy” games are fine, as long as you get the quote-unquote “correct” joycon for you hand, and are somewhat uncomfortable otherwise, and even some of the other control-style games are just sloppy; like the rhythm game that isn’t actually rhythm-based and the volleyball-esque game that ends after a single round so can last about three seconds, among others. These are all held together with a single “board” and weird card game mechanic, which supports four players despite all the mini-games being one-on-one, so your mates have to sit and watch you waggle weirdly half the time, and features slightly too much of of the “communist game for babies” elements the Mario Party series has become synonymous with. This would be fine if this were a children’s game, but Scribblenauts: Showdown has a 12+ from PEGI, presumably because you can create firearms and eldritch horrors to help make you better at things like sports and dancing, which isn’t a great message to be sending the kiddies. It leaves this whole mode feeling somewhat orphaned, like it doesn’t really belong under the Scribblenauts branding – yet another similarity to those terrible Wii party games (looking at you, M&M’s Beach Party… lord.)

It’s a shame, too, because the Sandbox mode is the same enjoyable, if slightly wonky, experience it’s always been, especially with local multiplayer, but it feels slightly half-baked and light on content because of the “Showdown” mode eating up development hours. In sandbox mode, you’re given one of a number of fairly small sandboxes (no way!), complete freedom with the game’s immeasurably deep dictionary, a few simple objectives to complete and the surprisingly tricky task of not destroying the world every five minutes by messing about with explosives or dragons or the like. Having a friend about, if your friends are anything like mine, makes that last point particularly tricky to achieve, but the freedom you’re given in how you approach tasks makes for a lot of fun, and the depth of this mode is incredible too – for instance try putting on some VR goggles for some interesting effects.. It’s particularly short, as mentioned, but brings some joy to an otherwise fairly dry package.

Even as a budget game (retailing for around £30) Showdown is tricky to recommend. It certainly looks the part: polished, lively menus, a pleasant if not stand-out soundtrack, an incredibly deep character creator: but all of this is style for a serious lack of substance. The party mode is unlikely to entertain anybody but the youngest of children, regardless of what PEGI thinks, and the classic, still-solid sandbox gameplay suffers as a result of it even existing, like my uni essays did when Breath of the Wild came out. One to pick up cheap.