Scribblenauts is an emergent puzzle action video game developed by 5th Cell and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for the Nintendo DS.

The game is considered by its developers to help promote emergent gameplay by challenging the player to solve its puzzles within certain limitations or through multiple solutions.

Jeremiah Slaczka, creator and director of Scribblenauts, envisioned the game as a combination of solving life situation puzzles alongside Mad Libs.

His vision was brought to realization through the "Objectnaut" engine created by 5th Cell's technical director, Marius Fahlbusch.

This, along with the simple art designs of 5th Cell's Edison Yan, allowed for the team to easily add new words to the database without expending much effort to program new behavior.

Reviewers believed that 5th Cell delivered on their promise to allow nearly any possible object to be created for use in Scribblenauts, but also lamented that the choice of controls in the game hampered their full enjoyment of the title.

[9] Players, using special software, claimed to have discovered that the full list of words tallies at 22,802 unique entries.

The dream was of being inside an Aztec temple and having to solve puzzles; one in particular involved three paintings, with the objective being straightening them and then moving on to the next room through a portal.

[19] Slaczka realized that the concept of the game might be considered impossible by other programmers, but found that 5th Cell's Technical Director Marius Fahlbusch felt confident they could create the required elements.

[9] The developers considered that the nature of the flexible and sometimes unforeseen solutions made the game strongly promote emergent gameplay.

[25] Slaczka noted that of the other publishers they talked to, they felt Warner Bros. was the best one, particularly due to their proximity to 5th Cell and their interest in the title.

[9] Within Objectnaut, each object is given a set of properties, including physical characteristics, artificial intelligence behavior, and how the player (through Maxwell) can interact with it.

[9] Five people from the team spent six months researching dictionaries and encyclopedias to create a large database of objects within the Objectnaut's framework, and then mapped out a hierarchy of data from this information.

[28] For example, every mammal-based object in the game is given the property of having "organic flesh", allowing it to be eaten or turned into meat, without having to specify these functions for each type of mammal they used.

[24] The team made sure to balance the abilities of the various objects that could be summoned to avoid creating an "uber character" that would act as a skeleton key for solving all of the levels, and give players more courage to try different elements.

[10] Slaczka noted that he would be frequently asked if certain difficult words were in the game when interviewed by the press, most of the time being able to respond affirmatively to these questions.

[21] Much of the initial level development was done on paper and to explore situations not commonly found in video games, due to their vocabulary system.

[23] The team included a virtual keyboard in addition to this system knowing that even "the human brain can't understand chicken scratch".

[45] Part of the success at E3 was considered partially due to the inclusion of then-recent Keyboard Cat Internet meme, which led to a grassroots-type excitement about the game at the convention.

[36][40][46] Adam Sessler of G4 TV believed that Scribblenauts' E3 success was from being a small but successful game from a small company in contrast to numerous other premier titles from other major developers and publishers that have become standard for the convention, such that the uniqueness of everything about the game made it the standout title of the show.

[48] IGN listed Scribblenauts in a preview of Nintendo DS games in 2009, labeling it as one of their top picks for the year.

The ESRB's description includes possible examples of the game's level of violence as "a club can be used to hit an animal; steak can be attached to a baby to attract lions; rockets can be lobbed at a man".

[57][58] Yan himself has drawn several more avatars in the same style for other games such as Street Fighter II and Final Fantasy VII.

John Walker of Eurogamer considered the game "an incredible achievement", with its word database "so utterly complete in its collection of everything ever in the universe".

[62] Craig Harris of IGN asserted that "the developers fully deliver on [the] promise" of allowing players to summon nearly any imagined object, and the core game alone is an "incredibly versatile Nintendo DS experience".

[61] IGN's Ryan Geddes criticized the game's poor controls and physics, demanding patience to overcome, and raised concerns that the title was rushed to market after its overwhelming positive response from the E3 convention.

Tringali further noted that they did not spend as much time on the stylus controls earlier in development, and would have considered sacrificing another feature, like the Nintendo Wi-Fi, to improve them.

[67] Kurchera also noted that with some puzzles, the game is often better played with others, including young children, as the combination of imaginative ideas will likely eventually stumble upon a solution.

It features multiple worlds which Maxwell must find out how to help various non-player characters to gain Starites, using the extended vocabulary abilities of Super Scribblenauts to solve puzzles.

[91] A sixth game in the series, titled Scribblenauts: Fighting Words was in development for iOS since 2014, but was cancelled in 2016 after 5th Cell laid off 45 employees, including lead animator Tim Borrelli.