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Maxwell, your favorite puzzle-solving Starite-collecting hero, is back in this all new iOS-based re-imagining of the popular Nintendo DS Game Scribblenauts. If you haven’t heard of Scribblenauts, it’s an imaginative game that relies on player ingenuity to solve a wide variety of puzzles.
The protagonist of the series, Maxwell, is equipped with a magical notebook that is able to summon up any and every object to solve puzzles. Faced with a gaping, fire-filled chasm? No problem. Write “bridge” into the notebook, and it appears out of thin air. Facing an enemy? Summon up a raptor, a flamethrower, or even a mythical man-eating beast. The possibilities are endless.
The game is set up as a series of levels and every level contains a puzzle that you must solve, with the end goal of getting Maxwell to the Starite he needs to collect. Maxwell is controlled by tapping and holding on the side of the screen where you want him to walk – he will jump, swim, and overcome obstacles on his own.
Puzzles will require you to summon objects from Maxwell’s magical notebook. For example, one of the first levels will require a bridge, so you tap the notebook, type in bridge with the iPad’s keyboard, and a bridge will spawn in mid-air in the level. It’s up to you to drag the bridge where it needs to go in order for Maxwell to progress.
The game has thousands upon thousands of vocabulary words, so you can summon almost anything, meaning puzzles can be solved in an infinite number of ways. Puzzles range from overcoming an obstacle, to defeating an enemy, to building movie scenes and helping prisoners escape.
Puzzles often need several objects, and your progress is marked with a series of pegs at the top. Solving a puzzle spawns a Starite, and the level is over when Maxwell picks it up.
If you get stuck, there are three hints that are available for every level, and they are revealed as time passes. The first hint will come after 10 seconds, the next at 20, and the final hint at 30, and each hint makes it a bit easier to solve the puzzles.
In all, there are five worlds with 10 levels each, but that’s actually a small fraction of the puzzles in the DS game. I managed to finish Scribblenauts and unlock almost all of the achievements within two days of playing, but this is still a game that can be replayed  again and again because of all of the possible solutions.
What I didn’t like: I played the original Scribblenauts game on the DS, and this one seemed short in comparison. I did like the variety of levels (there are old and new), which were harder than the DS version, but I’m hoping that more (free) levels are in the works.
To buy or not to buy: If you haven’t played Scribblenauts before, this is a must have game. It’s totally unique and unlike anything in the App Store. If you’re already a fan of Scribblenauts, I’d still recommend picking this up because it’s a different experience on the iPad.

• App Name: Scribblenauts Remix
• Version Reviewed: 1.1
• Category: Games
• Developer: Warner Bros. Entertainment
• Price: $4.99
• Score: