Recently, we asked our forum population to come up with an imaginative way to solve a Scribblenauts problem involving a beached whale. You can check out our request, and the subsequent suggestions in this thread on our forums.

Thanks to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment NZ, whoever managed to come up with the best idea would also win their very own Nintendo DS, as well as a copy of Scribblenauts to play on it.

We're pleased to announce that Jeremy Logan of Manukau has taken out this prize with his excellent design skills and practical application. Congratulations! Check out the gallery below for Jeremy's solution.

 

Every now and again, a game is released that blurs the line between educational software and mindless entertainment.

Most children of the 80's fortunate enough to attend a school that required both hands to count the decile rating will remember Granny's Garden, Dread Dragon Droom and the excellent Carmen Sandiego series. Even games that had no pretensions towards any specific education often taught a great deal about history or geography, like Civilisation, North & South, and Age of Empires. If you want someone to learn something, it seems, the best way is to make it fun.

Developers 5th Cell have grasped this concept of eduction-through-osmosis superbly with Scribblenauts. Originally shown at E3 this year to a rather unprepared media contingent who had to quickly fashion new "best in show" award trophies with Nintendo logos on them, the games theme is "Write Anything, Solve Everything". Using the DS touch screen and stylus, you do just that to allow the hero Maxwell to walk, swim or fly through a series of puzzles and gain a "Starite" token required to pass each level.

 

Scribblenauts, a puzzle game for the Nintendo DS with an interesting twist to it, could well be one of the hit games coming out of this year’s E3.

On show at the Warner Brothers Interactive stand, the pint-sized puzzler comes from Seattle-based developer 5th Cell where the ultimate objective is to collect things called Starites.

This is how it works: a scene on the DS’s touch screen shows a puzzle, say a cat stuck on the roof of a house. Your job is to get the cat down, but you do that by – and here’s the really cool part – by writing what item you’d like you use.