I often want to summon dinosaurs to consume my enemies and time machines to fix my mistakes. Apparently, someone else does too.

Created by 5th Cell and set to be released for the Nintendo DS in September, Scribblenauts is a standard platform puzzle game with one major twist: The solution to each of its 220 levels lies in any object you can think to summon. Need a ladder? Et voilà! A balloon? Do you mean hot air or helium? It’s a game so progressive that I can’t help but regress to a state of childish delight.

As I imagine solving all of my life’s problems by summoning combinations of random nouns and elder Gods (yes, apparently Cthulu can be the answer to your prayers), my mind turns back to a simpler and more frustrating era full of euphemistically labeled “adventure” games, designed to keep me stationary and blinking in a darkened basement.

Through franchises like King’s Quest, Police Quest and Monkey Island, developers including Sierra and LucasArts produced a generation of gamers who vividly recall hours of nonsensical clicking over every conceivable object and inventory item in the vain hope that something, anything, might happen. Does the pipe combine with the balloon? Try bending the fork into a lock-pick. I have to turn him inside out to get the note? Why am I living in a world of madness?

Scribblenauts, then, is the answer to my 12-year-old self’s prayers. Suddenly, I’ll be able to bulldoze logic with brute force, or at least circumvent insane adventure game logic with even more insanity. I won’t need to find that key because I’ll have an army of velociraptors at my beck and call. I won’t need to find the princess because I can just summon another one. A better one!

I mean, my God, I can have everything I ever wanted! It’s all finally within reach! All I’d need is… that damnable time machine.

Oh well, back to the drawing board. It was too bright out here anyway.