The problem with radical innovation is that there’s no precedent, no collective pool of experience to draw from. Almost any innovative videogame is sure to come up against a number of problems that no one had anticipated and Scribblenauts – one of the most innovative games to have been released on any platform in recent years – was no exception.

Videogames are usually an exercise in thinking logically about a series of tasks. Scribblenauts broke with that custom by asking us to think laterally.

In it, players controlled Maxwell, helping him to complete puzzles and collect starites by writing the names of objects into a notebook. These objects then materialised in the game and Maxwell could interact with them to advance. With more 15,000 nouns at the player’s disposal, the options appeared limitless.

One of the biggest problems the game encountered was at the conceptual level. Developer 5th Cell overestimated the way people think. It turns out that most people won’t think creatively if they don’t have to. For all the inventive license extended to players, there was no system in place to promote dreaming up new imaginative solutions. After an initial flurry that probed the game’s limitations, many players settled in and simply ended up recycling and applying the same few nouns to a variety of puzzles.

In a similar vein, many players suffered from a paradox of choice: When you have hundreds of potential solutions, simply choosing one can be an overwhelming task in itself.

Other issues were more mundane. For example, neither Maxwell nor the creatures he encountered had life bars or hit points, leaving players to guess how injured their hero or his enemies were. Being forced to navigate the game with the DS’ stylus when there was a perfectly good d-pad within thumb range was a glaring oversight.

That’s not to say the game wasn’t a resounding success – Gameplanet’s James Burnett lavished praise on Scribblenauts, calling it “a masterpiece of game design” – allowing only that there was room for improvement.

By expanding on the game’s interface and implementing a handful of new systems, Super Scribblenauts appears to do just that.

The most discussed is the inclusion of adjectives. Instead of creating a “monkey”, you can now create an “evil, flying monkey.” Or you can create an “arcade machine” and Maxwell can play a videogame within the game, tapping bombs with the stylus as they descend on his blocks.

Adjectives add pleasant if occasionally superfluous variety to the formula. Additionally, the game sometimes appears to struggle with nouns used as adjectives (the arcade in “arcade machine” being one obvious exception). In these instances, Super Scribblenauts strikes through the would-be adjective and provides you with a “vanilla” version of the object you requested.

But there should be no doubt that the game is much better off for their inclusion. More importantly, the clever use of descriptors will award you with more “ollars”, a new in-game currency. Creating a “magnificent mansion” for a man who needs a home will see you better rewarded than if you only managed a “house.”

Ollars are tied into another important new feature, the hint system. Hints come in three tiers, with the highest tier giving you the answer. Hints also become cheaper and more elaborate over time, so if you’ve been stuck on a particular puzzle for five minutes, the game will acknowledge the effort you’ve made.

5th Cell has also made efforts at localisation, meaning you needn’t always try to think internationally, and even if a moa or an emu is indistinguishable from an ostrich, the nod to antipodean curios is greatly appreciated all the same.

The changes to the interface are less high profile but equally important. A magnifying glass now allows you to identify objects in the game. A small portrait of Maxwell’s head is used to relocate the camera on the protagonist – now necessary as the camera doesn’t instantly pan back to him after you’ve stopped scrolling across the puzzle.

The d-pad is finally an option for controlling Maxwell as well, though purists will still be able to use the stylus.

Super Scribblenauts also includes an upgraded level editor, ready for use out of the proverbial box. It features predetermined mission types and selectable character scripts to make the design tool accessible to the game’s diverse audience. Players can also trade levels over wi-fi.

With 120 entirely new puzzles, to call the game an overhauled optimisation doesn’t do it justice – in spite of 5th Cell’s hesitation to call it Scribblenauts 2. The new systems appear to provide more structure for the player, and in doing so, offer the freedom of a tighter brief, or a more robust springboard for creativity.

Dust off your thesaurus for the game’s release here on the 29th of October.