Spore

Spore is a PC game which its very idea just almost gives the game a perfect score: a game that simulates life and evolution.

                Created by legendary game designer Will Wright (Also known as the creator of The Sims), Spore is a simple game that takes on the complex task of allowing a player to create a little microorganism and guide it through the process of evolution, eventually culminating in the said creature to become sentient, then leave its planet and explore the galaxy. The simple creatures are an amazing tool to practice one’s creativity, and the ability to share your creations with people all over the world is an amazing experience. Unfortunately, the task of simulating evolution is tough, and the game often changes pace way too quickly, resulting in somewhat shallow game stages for the more hardcore audience (Easygoing gamers won’t mind those aspects). Spore also makes an amazing use of the incredibly new programming technique called procedural generation. Creatures, buildings, tanks, aircraft, spaceships, and even planets are among the objects and beings that are created and edited by the player.  Any choice the player makes will also have an impact on his or her creature’s culture and society, and it is also a game that can be very educational at times.

Onto the game.

The game is based on several stages of life: Tide Pool (The stage where the creature is microscopic), Creature (The creature leaves the ocean and explores the planet), Tribal (The creature is now an intelligent life-form and organizes its species into simple villages), Civilization (the species now have the power to trade and create powerful weapons and machines), and Space (Self explanatory). The task given to the player is to guide the creatures through these stages and to reach the Center of the Galaxy.

                The game begins with an asteroid crashing into a planet, the asteroid hits the ocean, and your little cell pops out. The stage is a fluid, top-down perspective analog version of Pac-man: eat meat (or plankton, in case you’re a herbivore; even both later in the stage) and avoid your predators. The simplicity of this stage is forgivable, since it’s the beginning of the game. Your creature will face new foes and new challenges and you must upgrade your creature to be able to face those issues, and that’s where the Creature Creator comes in. Depending on the surroundings, you must place different parts on a creature (spikes, poisonous bulbs, squid-like sucker-jets, flagella, and eyes). Your creature’s size is editable and its color too! Buying parts costs DNA Points, which are gained by eating plants or animals. Some parts will come in handy at different times, and at other times they may be completely useless. The process is simple, in-game, one can call a mate, and then, they well, do something. Then you’re guided into the creature editor, edit the creature, hatch the egg, and off you go! The point of the stage is to gain a larger brain and to move onto land.

                The following stage, the Creature Stage, plays an important role in the creature’s life, as it is the last stage where the creature’s appearance (Except clothing, but that will be explained later on) can be changed. This game is now set in a 3 Dimensional environment, but it is still similar to the Tide Pool phase: Evolve your creature (but now the point is to become an intelligent being) and avoid your predators. The aspect of the game changes with two new additions: the nest and socialization options. The player (you) now has a home nest, where all of your kind will gather and it will serve as the main hub. Your interaction with other creatures will also take place at their own nests, you can choose to kill them (and eat them, in case your creature is/has become carnivorous), or to befriend them in a cute little mini-game where you must mimic the other creatures moves (Singing, dancing, posing) to impress and become friends with them. The game’s currency is still DNA points, these are now gained by killing animals, gaining new parts for your creature, and being friends with creatures (Being friends is a harder task to accomplish then killing them, thus the rewarding DNA Points are higher). The stage moves smoothly, but it hits a few speed bumps along the way, with the game suddenly becoming endlessly repetitive near the end of the stage. Fortunately, the next few stages take on a new appearance.

After you become sentient, the game shifts from you controlling one animal only to you controlling a small village in a Real Time Strategy type of game, the Tribal Stage. The game now involves a primitive form of diplomacy, where you can ally by impressing other tribes with a little musical act composed of primitive drums and flutes, or destroying other neighboring tribes with sharp weapons. The DNA Points have now become Food, and the focus point has now shifted from the evolution of a creature to the advancement of technology (The main objective is to destroy or ally with all of the 5 tribes on the map), thusly, creatures are now un-editable. However, creatures now have a new feature: The Clothing Editor. The new editor comes in, where you are able to pop in new clothes, shields, helmets, and symbols onto your creature. Every piece has its own advantage, like increased social interaction (For befriending other tribes), thicker armor (For fighting), or increased food gathering (For more food to be gathered in a short amount of time). Fortunately, this stage is one of the less repetitive stages of Spore. The only factor that somewhat tarnishes the reputation of this stage is the sudden change of pace, from a game that was played with one character, to a sudden change to multiple characters. This can be quite overwhelming at times, due to the fact that every member of your tribe has to be fed. Warfare can be tiring for them, but of course, befriending all of the tribes is a hard task too, but killing all of the other tribes off can bring later repercussions.  After your player takes care of all of the tribes on the map, you are led to the Civilization Stage.

Now the creatures enter the Civilization Stage. Now, this Stage is the one where the game feels like a “game” game. A complex diplomatic system, complete with three factions (Military, Religious, Economic), the way you played the game designates the faction. For example, if your species were brutal animals, they would become a Militaristic culture, if they were peaceful and friendly, they would be religious, and if a mixture, Economic. Each class has different ways to play and conquer the world.  The advantages and disadvantages of these classes create many different paths to follow, thus giving the game much more replay value. New editors also join the fray; this stage has the most editors than in any stage, with the editors being Building, Vehicle, Ship, Airplane, and Modern Clothing. These buildings and machines are now bought with the final form of currency, Sporebucks. The Civilization phase plays out in a similar way to the Tribal, but now your direct control over the creatures is nonexistent.  The focus of this stage is to conquer the entire planet via economic, religious, or military means. Once the entire planet is captured, the game moves on to the greatest phase of them all.

The Space Phase, this phase is the final phase, and with good reason: it’s huge. Once your creatures take control of the planet, you’re sent to a UFO creator, build your UFO, and off you go to colonize Outer Space and to meet different beings scattered around the Galaxy. There are about 100,000+ Star systems to explore, each with an average of 3 planets to find (although many star systems have around 9). There are also different types of stars (Blue Giants, Red Dwarfs. Yellow Main Sequence, Binary star systems), there are also Black Holes and Supernovae. It’s very hard for me to know what to say about this stage, since there is a LOT to talk about.  In short, the point of this phase is to explore the universe, buy tools and weapons, colonize alien worlds, contact intelligent life-forms (easier than it sounds), and find the center of the Galaxy.

In fact, every single star you see is able to be explored. The planets in this phase are also editable with special tools. Atmospheric tools pull the atmosphere levels up or down, same thing with temperature. These tools aid you in making a planet habitable. A planet’s habitability is measured with a Terra Score of T0, T1, T2, or T3, with T0 being uninhabitable, and T3 being lush planets with a completely filled biosphere, filling a biosphere requires you to kidnap animals from planets and placing them on an alien world (T1 or above, or else the creature will die). 9 Plants, 9 Herbivores, and 3 Carnivores/Omnivores (3 plants, 3 Herbivores, and 1 Carnivore/Omnivore for every terra-score) are needed to completely fill up a biosphere. A very well made life system.  Other tools include planet-paints (For coloring planets, like a red planet with a green sky and yellow seas, or even a completely pink planet!), planet surface tools, for designing planets (Placing mountains, seas, craters, rivers, and canyons, all with different textures, sizes, and colors), overall, a very busy game in terms of planetary gameplay. Another thing to worry about are other space-faring civilizations, as these can be threats and blessings. You can form trade routes, alliances, wage war, discuss philosophy, complete missions, and even purchase their star systems. The point of the game, however, is to find the Center of the Universe, and fight off a super-civilization of horrible creatures known as The Grox. There are too many things to discover in the universe, and it has been said that finding all of the secrets would take a person about 70 years of heavy gaming. There is no end to this game!

Fortunately, it only takes a few minutes to create something. There are many creators in this game, and they are the stars of the show.  There are millions of creatures that one can make, and many more costumes, buildings, and vehicles.  The creators are easy to use, and are extremely versatile tools for testing a person’s creativity. Omnivores, carnivores, herbivores, creatures with one leg or even made out of eyes! Spiders, hopping clams, T-Rexes, or something completely original, everything is possible. Plus, when someone makes a creature, it is automatically uploaded into the internet and sent to another person’s game (Thus ensuring a completely unique creature experience in every game).  Awesome.

If you want to, you can subscribe to other people’s creations via the game’s website, so your games can have a special theme or awesome-monsters-only gameplay. The immense universe of creations is just tremendously huge. The game has now over 100,000,000 creations, with the numbers constantly rising every day. Truly epic figures.

The game however, was badly crippled with the huge hype it received before its release, and that, I think, ruined a large part of my experience with it. Many things were promised throughout its production time, and many of those special things were left out of the game. The game also suffers from shallow stages with some of the later stages being easily tricked by cheap tactics (such as pausing the game and creating extra units for quick protection). The game is also a blocky representation of evolution; it shows the stages of life as bullet-points, not the fluid never-ending cycle that it really is. This is just nitpicking, as the game’s advantages can overshadow these concerns (Yet they are still there). One other problem that Spore was deeply involved in was a rushed production. The game first came out full of technical glitches and some bad bugs that drove most stages completely unusable. These little issues were fixed with patches, but it would have been nice to spend 50€ on a finished game.

Yet, I cannot really say anything bad about Spore. It’s a one-of-a-kind game which delivers a great amount of fun, and it’s one of the first efforts I have ever seen to demonstrate a realistic depiction of life and the Universe. Hands-down, one of the most amazing games of the year.