Frustations and fumblings
games Scribblenauts is a wonderful and infuriating game. On the one hand, here is a game that strives on creativity and forces a player to utilize their imagination to solve puzzles. The game creates a series of simple puzzles, such as featuring Santa Claus with a simple caption that reads "Give Santa something he wants." The game then allows the player to write any item they can think of and use it in the environment. This one puzzles can be solved by giving Santa a cookie, a present, a reindeer, and more. Another puzzles lets a player retrieve a cat from a tree. Does the player just write "ladder" and then pick up the cat? Or, does the player create a mouse and let the cat jump down and eat the the mouse?
It should be one of the easiest puzzle games around because the game allows the player to do whatever they want. However, most of these puzzles can be solved with a helicopter, a rope, a bomb, or several other choices. The game doesn't punish a player for using their limited vocabulary, and that's a shame. The only "challenge"aspect to the game arises when a player replays a puzzle, and instead of giving one solution to solve the puzzle, the player must give three distinct puzzles. But, again, minor variations such as "big cookie" will suffice.
It's not necessary to discuss the difficult and unintuitive controls for the game since that is not the focus of this entry. What is important is that sometimes under the weight of its own ideas a game suffers and falls. In some respect, this was the problem with Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. In this game, the player was allowed to create their own vehicle for a wide variety of tasks, and the tools were so great that the player could create one omnibus creation that handled all challenges.
Perhaps it shows a failing on the part of the player since the player creates these handicaps. But, a developer should account for these potential issues. If the central mechanic of a game depends on unimaginable variety, then a designer should construct the game to ensure this, which ultimately means punishing a player for not meeting the challenge of the game.