One game that somehow slipped through the cracks during the insane week of E3 was a little DS game called Scribblenauts.

The premise of Scribblenauts is very simple – you are trying to find objects in the world called ‘Starites,’ which can either be hidden or in full view, depending on the mode you’re in (puzzle or action).

You can collect these Starites by interacting with the world in a very unique way, which is by typing words – any words – onto the virtual keyboard that describe what you think will help you achieve your goal.

The example in the developer video below is of a Starite stuck in a tree, which means you need to find a way of getting it down. The developer types in the word ‘chainsaw’ at which time a chainsaw appears in the game, ready and able to cut down the tree, thus reaching the Starite.

You can also type in the word ‘beaver,’ and a beaver will appear to gnaw at the tree so it will fall down, or you could try typing in the word ‘ball,’ at which time a ball would appear for you to try and knock the Starite out of the tree. The word ‘ladder’ would also work, inserting a ladder into the game so your in-game avatar can climb up the tree to collect the Starite.

The developers of Scribblenauts, 5th Cell, have literally included tens of thousands of words in the game, accompanied by their virtual, animated counterpart that will react and behave ‘the way it’s supposed to,’ for example, another popular thing to try in the game, apparently, is to summon Death (or the Grim Reaper) into a scenario so he (it?) can suck the life out of anything it comes into contact with.

The appearance of these objects in Scribblenauts is the result of months of backbreaking work, as creative director on the project, Jeremiah Slaczka says: “We actually had five people and all they did is they went through dictionaries and Wikipedia and encyclopedias, and anything you can think of, and that’s all they did for six months, everyday, during the week.”

In order to power the behaviours of the objects brought into the world, the developers employed the laws of the world to help out: “With the technology,” continued Slaczka, “we basically said we’re going to take all the base things like fire and temperature and gravity and physics and we’re just going to put it down there, and the game’s going to take and all that know what to do with it

“We don’t have to program anything, so if a bear’s hungry and wants honey, we don’t have to program that, it’s going to know it already.”

Want to summon a dinosaur to attack an army of soldiers and tanks? Sure, go for it. Want to crush your enemies with Pluto? It will be done. Almost anything you can imagine (excluding copyrighted words and pronouns) can be inserted into the world.

For some more examples of what is possible in the wonderful world of Scribblenauts, don’t hesitate to watch the developer demonstration below:

Scribblenauts releases at the end of the year on the Nintendo DS.