Let's face it, no one is buying this game to save the sister from being turned to stone. The story is pretty much just a cover to this book, which is mostly filled with summoning magical creatures, making them rideable and flying, and then solving most of everyones troubles by adding the adjective "smart" to them. I specifically bought this game for a change of pace, having just beaten Pokémon Y and wanting a break in-between that and Bravely Default; which I am playing now. It was a break alright, but one that was rather short and boring. The claim that this journal Maxwell carries can summon any object is quite far from the truth, being unable to use both copyrighted words and more "mature" subjects. The latter is obvious as this is targeting a younger audience, but the former was disappointing.I claim that the game is short, but it's only because many problems that grant you the shards of a Starite are solved often using the same device every single time. As a friend put it "you'd be surprised how many problems can be solved with a Roflcopter." Indeed, just by adding the "flying" adjective to yourself can have you breezing through problems left and right. Oh sure, you can go about it the right way. Summoning a fireman to get the kitty from the tree, or you could also summon a lumberman to chop the entire tree down. The game becomes less about how to quickly and easily solve a problem, and more about how you can go about solving it a funny way. Even then, you might walk into a new map and suddenly you have Starite shards falling from the sky. This is because the things you change to Maxwell stick through each map, including there things he is riding. In fact, most of my game I rode atop a mermaid, a lamia, a harpy, and a centaur. Ten points if you guess the manga I'm a big fan of right now. Because of this, things you bring with you can have immediate effects in this new map; solving problems before you even read what they need. Making the game shorter.Of course not all problems or challenges can be solved so easily, and more then once I was forced to look up how to do something. One time in particular, you're inside a prison making an escape to a Starite. Many of the obstacles in this map are deadly, and dying restarts the entire challenge. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how I was suppose to get past the large spiked ball, I tried chains, ropes, but nothing worked. The clues I was getting didn't tell me anything helpful, and it wasn't until I got home that I found out you're suppose to use a magnet from above the ball to move it down the hall and out of the way. That might have just been me being a stupid, but I think not. Another time I couldn't progress was on a space level, where your suppose to give a banana to a monkey to set the scientist free. But because I had removed the scientist from the cage first, in an odd way, the monkey wouldn't cough up the shard. Normally I'd be told when I can't obtain one, but this must have been a buggy Starite shard.Now I've talked about these Starite shards and Starites, but what's the difference? Well the Starite shards are given out by either doing random acts programed into the game, or by solving problems found around a map area. Starite shard problems don't give out clues on how to beat them, you need to collect ten to make a Starite, and these problems can disappear if you do them in a certain order which forces you to restart. Restarting won't reset your Starite count, but it will return the map to it's original state before you showed up; and return Maxwell to his normal state as well. Starites are obtained via challenges, which pull you into a different area and have you solving a list of problems. Challenges can often disable certain words for you to use, like saying you can't make yourself invincible when trying to get past a gun toting robot. So creativity is not your friend in these challenges, with the game forcing you to do something a very specific way within a very small list of options on how to go about doing it. If you get stuck, you can click on the problem over time and read clues that become available; three clues in total for each problem given out over the course of a minute.Once you beat all the challenges and solve all the problems across the entire game, you free your sister and see the twist ending. I won't say I saw it coming, but I will say the narrator voice sounded like she was talking to a baby. Moral of the story, you can still be a dick and free your sister all the same. Once your done with the game, it puts you back in the first level next to your freed sister who you can't interact with at all. Assuming you beat all the maps, the only thing left to do is collect the shards you didn't get from the objects or actions you already did in the game. Except that's boring, so, time to move onto something else.Scribblenauts Unlimited gets a 5.5 out of 10