Developer 5th Cell’s highly anticipated title, Scribblenauts, launches tomorrow. I spoke with lead designer and 5th Cell co-founder Jeremiah Slaczka during last week’s Penny Arcade Expo about their quirky little DS game, which was a surprise hit at E3 2009 and crowd magnet at PAX. He also showed me a little demo of what can be done in the the game.

For those who don’t know, Scribblenauts is an action puzzle game in which typing any noun brings it to life in the game, which you can then use or interact with. For example, if you type the word BICYCLE, a bicycle will come from the sky that you can ride. These nouns are used to solve the 220 puzzles in the game. One very simple puzzle I tried out involves helping a farmer by giving him three farm animals. Simply write down names of any three farm animals (I wrote COW, PIG, and CHICKEN) and drag it towards him. I noticed that when I wrote down CHICKEN, I was further asked if I wanted the food or the bird, which is a nice touch.

Although copyrighted and vulgar words are obviously not allowed in Scribblenauts, Slaczka enthuses that there are tens of thousands of words in the game, thus allowing players to solve the puzzles in multiple, sometimes unorthodox ways. If you want to use a submachine gun to get rid of a piranha, feel free to do so. But keep in mind that sometimes your actions may have negative consequences, as I witnessed when Slaczka wrote MEDUSA. The classic gorgon promptly turned everyone near her into stone, including Santa Claus (which Slaczka wrote down as well, just for fun).

Don’t worry about having to only use basic nouns in Scribblenauts. Yes you can write down DOG and GUN, but you can also write GERMAN SHEPHERD and BAZOOKA, as long as they’re not copyrighted names. However, some items aren’t covered. According to Slazcka, “If it makes sense to be different, we’ll do it. If it doesn’t, we won’t. For example, cheese is cheese. It’s not gonna really do much. Maybe it’s a bit stinky, but Swiss cheese, American cheese — cheese is cheese.”

When I asked if 5th Cell used any particular dictionary to obtain their words, Slaczka responded that they used multiple sources — encyclopedias, dictionaries, wikis, etc. Most of the time they were inspired by just looking at the world around them. “There is nothing too obscure, nothing too weird,” he explained. “I don’t know what this is called (points to my shoelace), but we have this. The little plastic thing at the tip of your shoelace. We have that.” Obscure indeed.

Those of you dying to know how you can use the plastic tips of your shoelaces to solve a puzzle can do so tomorrow, when Scribblenauts is released.