Scribblenauts Unlimited

Scribblenauts Unlimited was among the Wii U's launch titles and offered a fresh puzzle adventure built on a simple but brilliant idea — playing as the boy Maxwell, the player can summon practically anything, from a ladder to a helicopter to a dragon or an alien, by typing any word on screen (or entering it via the GamePad), and use it to solve puzzles.

The game abandons the purely level-based structure of previous entries and offers a connected open map of the town of Newbridge, where the player completes residents' side tasks while also collecting heart pieces for his enchanted sister Lily. The game's dictionary contains tens of thousands of objects and their interactions — fire burns wood, water extinguishes fire, a zombie attacks a human — creating enormous room for creative, often absurd solutions to a single situation in many different ways. The GamePad let players type words directly on the touchscreen and drag summoned objects with a finger, which was more intuitive than the controls on other platforms and typing on a keyboard using the analog stick. The game also includes a level editor where players could create and share their own puzzles built on the same extensive object dictionary.

The visual style, with round, comic-like characters and pastel colors, suited the game's light, family-friendly tone well, and the music had a cheerful, xylophone-tinged feel that changed depending on the time of day and the district the player was currently exploring. Contemporary reviews praised primarily the creative freedom and replayability, while occasionally inconsistent difficulty and the simplicity of the tasks themselves drew criticism. Today, Scribblenauts Unlimited is remembered as one of the best examples of how well the GamePad could work as a supplementary input tool, and as a pleasant, undemanding game for players of all ages.

Why play: For creative freedom and replayability, supported by the GamePad as a handy supplementary input tool, this is a pleasant and undemanding game for players of all ages.