Buzz is generated during E3 when writers hang out between meetings, or in dark corners of rented-out clubs drinking free drinks and discussing the day's games. One title kept coming up in conversation this year: Scribblenauts. Everyone repeated that this was a game that had to be played, one that was going to make waves in the industry. The game was being shown in the back of Warner Bros.' booth at the show, and always enjoyed a large crowd. We caught up with Jeremiah Slaczka, the co-founder and creative director of 5TH Cell, to talk about what made the game so special.

The game is a puzzle title where you type in the name of objects to use to achieve your goals, and that's where the creativity comes in. To get a cat from a tree you can type in "catfood" and entice it to jump down. You can type in "giraffe" and have the kitty jump onto the animal's head and slide down its neck. You can type "trampoline" to jump up and grab it yourself. This is just scratching the surface of the insanity of the game, and Slaczka was evasive when we asked for an idea of how many objects were included in the game. "More than you'll ever be able to use!" he told Ars.

"The core rules are nothing copyrighted or trademarked, nothing vulgar, and nothing proper," he went on to explain. "Although we did bend the rules with some well-known individuals like Santa Claus and Einstein." You won't be able to type in "Pepsi," for instance, but "soda" would work fine.

This type of expansive gameplay doesn't come easy, nor is it easy to produce. "The core team for Scribblenauts was around 15, plus outsourced help," Slaczka said. "We had five people, over about six months, research and come up with the tens of thousands of words present on the Scribblenauts dictionary. Word content was updated in Microsoft Excel, and imported and tracked using custom tools."

Just think about that for a while: before the game amazed those of us who tried to "break" it by guessing items that may not be included, there was a team of people whose only job was to come up with items that people may want to use to solve the puzzles, code them in, and then code in the seemingly endless amounts of interactions. It's not enough to include an idea of what can be done with a blanket; you have to understand what that blanket would do when matched with every other item in the game.

The trick is to believe in the idea, and move slowly

"The complete game doesn’t usually come to me at once, it takes time, and over that period of time I’m fleshing out the idea in my head," Slaczka told Ars. "Once I feel the idea is worth pursuing, I generally involve our Technical Director, and start to jot down aspects of the idea on paper." Scribblenauts was completely self-funded, meaning 5th Cell had the freedom to create the game they wanted.

"We focused on tools first, spending several months just laying the framework for the product. Our core tool, Objectnaut, controls the behaviors and properties of all Objects. There were some cases that we refined in code (aka brute force), but for the most part we followed the original design, which called for a completely data-driven hierarchical object system."

This game was begging to be shared, and of course the more people that played it, the more words and objects they had to add to the game. "Once the core systems were in place, we built the Tree Level, and let people at it. From day one, everyone was amazed at seeing what they write appear, and it helped us find some obvious words we missed."

With such a high-concept game, 5th Cell made sure that testing was used only to make the experience better, not change what made the game so special. "Focus testing is valuable to us, but we reject the concept of focus testing an idea into existence," he explained. "If I’m happy with a concept, we’ll develop it until the point where we’re comfortable with receiving feedback. At that point, we get it out to a mix of friends and strangers, and see if there are overriding issues that occur. We then tweak the game to be accessible to as many users as possible."

For now, only on the DS

With the game enjoying such a high level of interest, the question of ports was inevitable. "Right now, we are focused on bringing Scribblenauts to the DS. We designed the game specifically for this system because we want it to be fun for all types of gamers—and the touch screen and stylus makes it easy and intuitive for anyone to pick up and play," Slaczka said. "If we look at other systems, it won’t be for a while." It doesn't hurt that the DS is relatively inexpensive to develop for, and remains one of the most popular systems around the world.

It's impossible to play Scribblenauts and not have a huge smile on your face due to the sheer number of items included in the game, and the creativity involved in playing. Some levels feel almost like a gentle IQ test... anyone can think of one or two ways to do the simpler tasks, but coming up with something off the wall takes wits. The hype and post-E3 awards are well-earned: this is one of the few games at the show that truly brought something new to gaming. We'll wait until we have the full game to offer our final verdict, but after playing the game at E3 and talking to one of the minds behind the project, we're very optimistic about this game.

Scribblenauts is coming to the Nintendo DS this September.