A game the size and scope of Scribblenauts is bound to have a bevy of glitches. Some of these are inconsequential, some hilarious, and some can actually cause your game to crash.
Useful/Fun Glitches[]
- Objects are mutually transparent to anything they can be attached to. For example, Starite can be tethered to a Door, and they will simply fall through or can be pushed through.
- How To Drop The Limit Bar:
- Spawn a Cloud, Glue, Large air vent, and a Nuke, stick the glue to the top of the cloud and add the air vent on top of the glue. then drag this contraption near the top of the screen, but not to high. lastly place the nuke over it so it floats above the screen. You will hear a explosion but nothing appears to happen. The limit bar will have decreased by two. Reuse until its empty to have unlimited space! but if to much objects are made (about 30) then the game will lag and eventually freeze.
- Fixed Ladder + Grapple - Make sure you're standing next to a wall. Now, equip the grapple and shoot the ladder. Click on the ladder, and select "Climb." Max will proceed to climb upwards until something gets in your way, you reach a ceiling or you run out of wall. This can be very helpful if you need to scale VERY high walls (such as Action 3-7).
- Board + Belt - First create a gap the board can span. Place the board over the gap and attach the belt to the bottom of the board. Have Maxwell stand on the middle of the board and attach the other end of the belt to him. After jumping a few times, Maxwell will likely rocket into the top of the screen and die. If you attach the belt to the top of the board instead, Maxwell will have an increased, though sporadic, jumping ability.
- In Action 3-8, glue anything just small enough to fit, such as a mine, to the top node of the upper boulder. It will start clipping into the ground below, and where it goes after that seems random and based on how the physics engine glitches out.
- Basilisk + Fairy godmother = Infinite Roses [Explain.]
- Multi-item objects, such as Amazon and Office, do not count toward your par within levels.
- Putting NPCs in containers:
- 1. Give a humanoid a weapon (Note: not all weapons seem to work. It seems to only work with small weapons. Like a Slingshot.).
- 2. Hold on to a container object, such as a Gift, Basket, Wallet.
- 3. Click on the humanoid.
- Anyone can learn to fly:
- Step 1: Put on a wearable flight item, such as Jetpack
- Step 2: Spawn a rideable animal and choose 'mount'
- Step 3: Fly.
Time Machine Glitch
- Moving the Time Machine to restricted position (e.g moving it to the ground, and it'll show an X logo) while the screen is flashing will make the flashing animation stuck in a loop. Move the Time Machine again to end the loop.
- If Maxwell is standing in the path of a closing steel door, he will be stuck in it. If the door is re-opened, Maxwell will be pushed into the ceiling/wall.
- Vending machine + Handcuffs + Small Object = Lets you put any items on the stage (Excluding ones that are stuck on the stage like Steel Doors and Levers). You can use this glitch for an easy Starite, unless the Starite is attached to a rope, and the rope is attached to something which is stuck on the stage (in which case you can burn the rope first). This also works with Shackles, Cord or Wire and a Coffin or Casket.
- Digger + Shrink Magic = uncontrollable bouncing when you try to dig and bouncing when driving into small holes that you dug.
- Glue iron to a starite on the ground.
- To escape the level, put a hole object (Pool, Seashore, Hole) in the ground. Then use a Shrink Ray on it. It will create a gap between the hole object and the level that you can use a flying object to escape through. This glitch will allow you to fly around inside the ground. You can swim if there's water underground.
- Spawn a skeleton, than turn him upright, and then place him on the ground. Glue a Soda on his head, and he will sink into the ground, right where Maxwell and NPCs walk. If you do this right, an NPC may jump on his head, causing it to fall of the screen. Also works with a corpse. Hilarious results after you do this with a corpse. Once you sink it into the ground, shoot it with lightning and it will turn into a zombie, right as it falls off the screen
- You can ride a Panda into the sky! First, summon a Lasso and a Target. Grab the lasso and use it to grab the target. Then, while still holding the lasso, ride the panda. Attempt to jump over the target. The panda will instead jump ON the target, and ride it into the heavens until you leave the screen and die.
- For some reason, attempting to spawn a Chow chow (a breed of dog) instead summons a pear. If you attempt to summon"chow" (food), it will instead correct you to the dog breed... and again summon the pear. The pear also seems to scare other dogs... AAH it's so scary!!
- Environmental objects which contain water (such as the Pool or the Ocean) can be used to carry small, buoyant objects... even if you don't place them anywhere. After summoning the object, simply drag the "watery" part on top of any object that floats. If you move the environmental object slowly, the smaller object will be carried with it.
- If you get into a vehicle on the other side of a tripwire that is very close, the tripwire won't be set off.
- Once Maxwell have activated an explosive, you can move it when it's flashing to stop the explosion. Nuclear bomb is different. Once activated, the only way to stop it is to delete it. It will flash while moving it around the screen, in the X position, frozen in ice, in a cage that is also frozen, and at the garbage-can if you didn't put it in yet. The second it explodes, delete it so the screen stays blank forever.
- Large steel cage will fly out of the screen if it is frozen up right and unfreeze. (stand on top of it and you'll fly with it)
- Moon-walking "any big hostile animal with a long tail like a dragon" First choose your animal, Then attach food on its tail with glue. It might be hard because it wiggles so try your best. Be sure you're not in his way and give him a large flat area to moon walk. This also works with a Hydra by attaching one end of a rope to one of his noses and riding him.
- If you are standing near a guy that is going to be frozen. you might get trapped within the ice block and still be able to move. In some special conditions, you might be able to escape.
- A fishing rod has a limited length but when you freeze (magic works) something that you already hooked on to without standing too close to it, you can stretch the string as far as you want.
- After you released "wave" on the screen without Maxwell, immediately drag it to the ground to show X and not show Maxwell. The screen will stay blank until it moves back to the dead Maxwell. (try putting wave in the air)
- After some creature or people falls asleep or got knocked out, there's a space where they're suppose to be when they're awake that's invisible but the game still thinks it's there so you can hit it, give something to him/her from that spot, objects that can't be held can't be placed there, and the X logo will appear there.
- Drop bed upside down in a lake from a high place. After a few tries, the bed should go through the lake. If you jump in after, you'll fall through too!
- Magnet: Magnets pull items with acceleration greater than acceleration due to gravity, and keep pulling items that are in contact with the magnet. This results in some bizarre physics; under some circumstances it creates a perpetual motion machine.
- For an example, in a stage with no ceiling (such as the title screen), create a large metal object, then create a magnet above the object. Rotate the magnet so the U-shape points downwards towards the object, and release the magnet a little ways above the metal object. If done properly, the object will fly upwards towards the magnet as the magnet falls downwards. You'll also notice that when the two items collide, the metal object will simply continue moving towards the magnet and fly off the screen and be lost forever.
- Surround an object on both sides w/ walls, as close together as possible and then use magic to freeze it and 1 or both of the walls should crumble
- On action level 7-11:Move Maxwell to the rightmost point, just next to the barrels,and put him inside a SHELTER. Then, gently remove this same SHELTER; if done correctly, Maxwell will be moved to the outside of his explosive square.
- [Lasso] If you try to grab an object past a wall either above you or below you without grabbing any object it might get stuck behind the wall, you can grab tip of the lasso with your stylus and drag it to any unoccupied area.
- In the first title screen level, you can go inside the ground by moving all the way to the right, then mount CHI, try to fly up, and you will somehow appear in the ground (if you get off of the dragon you will fall off the screen). This might work in the TIME MACHINE dinosaur level because it has the same layout.
- When you turn a woman into a werewolf you can put out the sun and turn her into a man. You can turn a man into a ghoul by putting a vampire next to him. Give him serum and he turns into a woman.Turn a man into a zombie then use serum/antivirus to turn him into a woman. GENDER CHANGE!
- If you take a flying vehicle with small wheels and fly it into a body of water, you will notice after the vehicle short-circuits, the wheels continue to spin. Afterwards, make any object collide with a spinning small wheel and the vehicle, and the NPC inside it, will vanish/die. This an kill you in the beach title screen theme.
- How to teleport across levels.
- Go to a player-created level and summon a time machine
- After using the time machine and entering the hidden level, kill yourself with a nuke, meteor, etc.
- After you die you will find yourself not at the begging of the player-created level, but the level the player-created level was modeled after.
- When you complete that level, you will find yourself at the title screen for a different world
- Summon a sailboat. When you pick it up and move it towards the ground it will initially be red. When you move it farther down, however, it will cease being red. When you let it go it will fall through the ground.
- This will let you use nukes to view the game's tileset. Go to the first Title Screen Playground, Type "Nuke", then activate it and drop it from the top of the screen. It should explode twice and The tileset should appear for a second.
- On Puzzle 6-4, Pick up the mushroom next to you and drop it. It should be floating
- Poison ivy can only hurt people, but destroy inanimate objects as well.
- On the Beach sandbox, swim to the land on the right. Equip yourself with a lasso. Put a wall on the edge of the platform. Put an anchor within lasso range and lasso it. The anchor should pull you into the wall, which you can swim in.
- For a fun alternative to walking, equip a long weapon (like a staff) and put a rope on the front end. Put on a parachute and jump around. You can't go up some hills and with the hills you can go up you will go very slowly. Have fun!
- This glitch will allow you to skip past the "solve the level three different ways" challenges. First, let's say you had to use an Axe to cut down a tree for the starite. On the first try, write Axe as usual. On the second try, write "Cake Axe" or "Pokemon Axe" or some other "Word Axe" thing that isn't a real word in the game (so Cake Giant works, while Frost Giant does not!) and it will appear as an Axe, Giant, whatever and will let you use it even if you used the normal "Axe" in the first try.
The entry below does not belong on this wiki. Consider moving it to a Super Scribblenauts wiki.
- In Super Scribblenauts, you can make frozen humanoids have regular coloring. What you do is you create your being, then equip them with an item with the adjective "cold". Once you do this, freeze them and they will start flickering . Pick them up repeatedly until they stop with the adjective "cold" instead of "frozen". Place them somewhere they can't be (in the floor, etc.) and tap the magnifying glass. The character will disappear, but their item will not. Drag the transparent character into play and they will have their regular color while still being frozen. Add another of the same object and freeze it for odd colors. You actually can do this glitch with anything freezable by using cold glue.
- The fake Maxwell can pick up small immovable objects such as steel attached to a wall. It does not work in super scribblenauts.
- You can make it rain bullets by setting up two farsighted immortal sentient immovable angry force fields equipped with a gun, then place two immortal immovable invisible force fields above the other force fields. The bullets will fly down, go through walls and occasionaly get stuck in walls.
- If you use a teleporter, in the secret level, ride an animal and interact with the teleporter and Maxwell won't exist. If you ride an animal and then jump off in this state, Maxwell will hover in midair, and if you try to walk, Maxwell will do his walking animation but won't go anywhere.
The entry below does not belong on this wiki. Consider moving it to a Super Scribblenauts wiki.
- In Super Scribblenauts, gluing a periscope to somethings while at the title screen will sometimes cause the periscope to appear behind the background after you save and reenter the title screen.
The entry below does not belong on this wiki. Consider moving it to a Scribblenauts Remix wiki.
- In Scribblenauts Remix, (NOTE: Do not play any level, just the location you are at, the map you are in before you choose a level) first spawn in an Arcade Machine, then LHC with a mad scientist, before the scientist sets off the LHC, use the arcade machine and after you have finished your minigame, the mad scientist would have already set off the bomb, wait, and watch it continuously destroy the level with a black hole. Tip- Without you playing the minigame, the black hole would only destroy the map once, restarting the map because the LHC is an apocalyptic object.
- A medusa can turn any creature to stone and it can turn another medusa to stone. Spawn both of them together, and dispose of the medusa that isn't stone. Use a magic wand on the stone medusa, then it will be a head. Spawn a regular medusa, it will have a "devil icon face", which means it will interact with the object. Now, it will use the head as a weapon and will now shoot rocks. Maxwell can also use the head as a weapon, and can use it to turn any creature to stone. It will not explode when hit on a wall, it will go through it. Good for secret rooms to kill off mobs. The weapon will only turn mobs to stone, it cannot harm solidified mobs, or objects. It will push around objects when used upon, and the rock will not explode as usual with other shooting weapons, and will also go through the mob or object when shot at, then through the walls.
- This only works on levels. First place a stationary object (i.e. pond, lake, pit (environment)) Then click the magnifying glass twice and the object is movable!
Freezing Glitches[]
Bugs and glitches are annoying, but nothing can top the freezing glitch. There's no worse feeling in the world than realizing you'd have to restart your game because it froze on you. Sometimes you simply lose a few seconds of entertainment, but sometimes you lose a huge amount of time trying to complete a level. They're never fun.
The following glitches are easy to reproduce and seem to mostly occur on the retail cart. Interestingly, most or all of these (including the level editor freezes below) are absent when the game is run on an emulator. Ninja shark and ghost shark freeze instantly.Not kidding it always freezes every time you do it.
- Black holes seem to be able to freeze the game sometimes if too many items were going into it at once. When using the black hole be careful of the placement so that it does not get too many items. Compared to a black hole in reality, a minor concern.
- Corpse + Electrical chair - Sometimes freezes, sometimes does not. Theorized that it has to do with the corpse turning into a zombie object
- Corpse + Stun Gun - Similar to above, same results
- Corpse + Jackhammer - Same issue as above
- Corpse + Tome - More of the same.
- Possible solution: The above bugs seem to be related to a height issue. If you drop the corpse/chair within inches of the other it SHOULD work. Dropping it higher up will freeze.
- Mannequin + Stilts - Bizarre bug, I know, but it totally locks up your game. Note that only Maxwell can equip stilts. No NPCs can. These may be related.
- Santa + certain levels? - Currently unconfirmed just how destructive Santa is, but evidence suggests his "give everyone presents!" mechanic messes things up. In Puzzle 2-2 you can summon Santa who gives everyone presents at once. Upon getting the starite the game freezes.
- Possible solution: Simply delete Santa prior to picking up the starite
- T-Rex/Many hostile creatures + Time Machine/Portal/Teleporter - After taming and riding the creature and interacting with the device, screen fades to black and never returns, apparently freezing. Prevents dramatic embellished recreations of Post 217...:(
- Possible solution: Simply wait until you've arrived at where you're going to summon and tame your hostile creature mount.
- Possible explanation: On emulator, taming a hostile creature then riding the time machine to present time makes Maxwell disappear, and the hostile creature 'attacking' something. Maxwell..is..eaten? Equip anything on the invisible Maxwell (should be near the creature) and the game crashes. (Depends on the taming method, cupid arrow will crash the game instantly after riding it to present time, while using mind control device on emulator results with no crashes and disappearance of Maxwell. Crashes on real hardware.)
- Note: Doesn't crash one some versions
- If you summon the Loituma Girl and use Earth Magic on her, game freezes. Most likely because she can't go hostile on anything.
- Occasionally, when a hostile creature with a saddle on dies, the game will lock up. The creature does not need to be tamed, necessarily. This is not always reproducible.
- Possible solution: Saddles don't really do much; you can sit in it on the creature's back but you won't be able to control the creature without taming it. You could limit your saddle use to friendly creatures only. :P The one exception to this is hostile, untamable creatures that do become controllable with the saddle, like griffin. These cases have not produced a crash in my testing, however.
- Getting the starite as Shrunken Maxwell. You can shrink Maxwell by giving a hostile person a shrink ray or dropping shrink magic on Maxwell.
- In the ollar store there are 2 hidden options (at the place where you can select either avatars or music). #1. is the first bright yellow square at the bottom of the screen, if you touch it the screen will "scroll" twice. If you do it again three "scratches" will appear in the box. #2. is the third dark colored square at the bottom of the screen, if you touch it the game will freeze. It might not be a glitch, maybe it was something that was taken out of the game before it was released.
- If you summon a T-Rex and a saddle, place it on the T-Rex then spawn a Dragon, and pit them against each other, (While your riding the saddle on the T-Rex) as the T-Rex dies, the game will freeze.
- If you fire a stun gun(Doesn't stun,it's the agent's pwnage [English Please] but weak weapon) at a corpse,the game may freeze.This is likely because the game struggles to destroy the corpse and make it a zombie at the same time,and cannot make a decision.When you think about it,it's sorta funny.
- If you attack a sleeping humanoid with any type of weapon you swing while riding a Pogo stick your game will freeze.
- Attacking someone with a melee weapon while on a Pogo Stick. There really is nothing that could do with it, except maybe the physics engine.
- Make a chain gun. Then make a fairy godmother. Put the chain gun far away from her but not too far. Turn it on. She will turn the cannonballs into roses. This does not fill the item meter. She keeps doing it until the game freezes.
- Make a person and drop Blue magic on him/her. Put the person and the ice block so they are red and have an X on them. Drop an atomic bomb on from a high point. The game will freeze shortly after
Level Editor Glitches[]
- Create a starite. Naturally, you need this to have a complete level. Only, when you are in editor mode, and want to trash the starite, the game recognizes it as a fail, and completely resets the level editor, so you have to start blank! Creators beware, always save your level in time.
- Likewise, if you put a starite (or any object) inside a container there is no way to take it out while in edit mode. You can only trash the container in order to get rid of both. If you put a starite in a box you cannot get the starite out without destroying the box, which will "fail" the level and force you to restart
- * Possible Solution: You cannot get rid of the starite in any way once you've created it. You will reset your level. Place the starite LAST so there's no risk of destroying it
- If you have only a really small chunk of your item limit bar left, spawning a big/hardware tasking item (huge boulder, chain) the game will freeze. (Emulator doesn't)
- Possible Solution: Simply remove other items to free a bit of the item limit bar, so you can create other, larger objects.
- Puzzle level 2-9 cannot be edited and will always crash the game. (Emulator doesn't)
- Placing objects which always vanish upon creation--like any gas, smoke or bubble--into the level while in create mode leaves them hanging in mid-air, sticking around and spewing massive streams of particles into the level. Playing the level causes them to fall to the floor, but they stick around and continue to spray particles. They can't be picked up, but they can be pushed around with the air vent and similar objects. Careful, though--this can cause the game to crash very easily due to object overload.
- On the main shop menu, tap a square where you would normally see an arrow. The screen will turn as if you had entered a new menu, and show corrupted arrow sprites. Most of the time, it crashes the menu and inverts the colors rather oddly, while playing odd, corrupted audio cacophony.
- If you create a level where an earth magic will immediately hit a Loituma Girl, it will not freeze your game.
Invincible Objects[]
For one reason or another, these objects cannot be destroyed by the traditional means with which you'd destroy non-invincible objects. You know what I mean.
- Church
- Synagogue
- Uranium (and every other radioactive things, like einsteinium, plutonium...etc)
- Pool,Lake,Ocean,Fen,etc...
- Priest
- Blob (Note: This is can be defeated with the Flamethrower [Or a Fearless Pirate])
- Half pipe
- Quarter Pipe
- Some Metal Stuff like steel spike or steel door
- Lawn Gnome
- Target
- Building