Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Here’s what just happened.

I was in the Wild West background at the Super Scribblenauts title screen. The game pre-populated it with a Curious Mountain Lion, a Watchful Vulture and a Lonely Old Wagon. Not sure what visually can identify a Conestoga Wagon as “lonely,” but whatever.

I started by dropping in a reg’lar ol’ meme, a Sad Panda. Yep, a normal-looking panda with a little frowny face thought balloon appeared. So I made an Angry Potion. You can use potions with any adjective to add that adjective to a pre-existing creation. Now the panda’s tag read “Sad Angry Panda.” Yes, adjectives will stack.

The newly-angered panda noticed the mountain lion. Being merely curious, the lion was no threat to anybody else in the scene, but it willingly responded to the panda’s threat index and killed it. Although the panda just poofed away in the grand video game fashion. IE, it did not leave behind a Dead Panda or a Ghost Panda.

Nevertheless, that put me in the mind for some reanimation, so I created a Zombie Potion and used it on the Watchful Vulture. The vulture proceeded to infect the mountain lion AND the wagon with zombiness. Now the adjective “Undead” was prepended to all of their tags. The three scrapped a little bit amongst themselves, with the result being that the vulture die/vanished and the wagon lost a wheel.

So how to deal with this zombie outbreak. I brought in a Hunter. (Not a Zombie Hunter, obviously. That would have only added to the problem.) The hunter came with his own rifle. But he was instinctively afraid of the Undead Curious Mountain Lion.

I gave him a Brave Potion and he stridently walked over and killed the mountain lion.

But what to do with this hunter, clearly drunk on bloodlust and a threat to all. I figured that Curious Activist was the closest I could get to a PETA representative. And damned if that didn’t generate a hippie. Initially, the hippie and the hunter just walked around, perhaps eyeing each other warily. But after a minute, the hippie noticed the rifle, walked over, and turned it into a flower.

I thought that was pretty great, but could I find a way create a lasting bond between these two guys? I made a Hackee Sack (which is the non-copyrighted version of Hackey Sack) and dropped it between them. No one moved. I picked up the sack and made one, then the other, hold it. But they wouldn’t do anything with it. They just held it.

I guess their respective ideologies where too far distanced to link arms over a good game of Hackey Sack.

Er, Hackee Sack.