Scribblenauts’ Maxwell Handicapped by Time and Budget Issues

Scribblenauts had the potential to be a great game. In execution the scope of the dictionary busting gameplay mechanic works reasonably well, with problems seldom arising from object interaction or fault. However, the stylus controlled “point and click” movement was the defining letdown for countless reviews from nearly all online and print publications.

In a post-mortem article for Game Developer magazine later printed in part by Gamasutra, 5th Cell’s Joseph Tringali openly speaks on the project’s failings, talking at length on the hows and whys of the erring controls. Apparently, the team themselves (presumably after Maxwell ignored a recently spawned weapon and ran straight into the piranha filled water for the 35th time in early playtesting), acknowledged the need for a secondary control scheme midway through development but ran into both time and budget constraints.

Tringali claims it became necessary to sideline the control refinement in order to truly deliver on the game’s tag-line: “Write anything. Solve everything”. Realising alternative d-pad control implementation would “take a single person 3-4 weeks to integrate”, the idea was discussed but scrapped due to self-imposed restraints owing to a tight, self-funded schedule. The potential loss of the game’s largely unnoticed Wi-Fi connection was suggested as a means of freeing up time, but by the time the team had really addressed the issue “it was too late to cut features.”

“We knew this was going to take a big hit from reviewers,” says Tringali in a bout of surprising foresight, “but we could only spend a limited amount of work on it.” While it may seem unfair to criticise the overly ambitious Scribblenauts, it is difficult to enjoy the title with the controls as woefully wonky and inaccurate as presented in the retail release. Even ignoring the potential for d-pad improved movement, the loose stylus sensitivity coupled with the “crow flies” path-finding of Maxwell means that accuracy is often entirely eschewed, rendering the game’s action levels a true pain.

We still feel stylus control was the correct decision for Scribblenauts. The DS is a casual platform by design and allowing non-gamers the ease of use of a pencil-like system for a game targeted at everyone over a D-pad only scheme was overall the best choice. But in retrospect; our implementation of those controls was only at 50 percent of where it needed to be.

Tringali’s vague defence of the touch screen certainly holds some truth but it seems a tragedy that a problem as clearly discussed in development as user manipulation of the game world was not better handled and allowed just a small extension for refinement. Perhaps inevitably, Tringali’s “50 percent” was often the amount lopped clear from review scores.

Via: Joystiq