uring our visit to Leipzig’s Game Convention 2007, we got a chance to check out EA’s upcoming game Spore. It was a fitting place to see the game—the last time we’d seen anything new about the game, it was at last year’s GC. While the focus of that presentation was about showing off the ambitious life simulation at the cellular level and giving an early look at the game’s creature editor, this time around we got to see a whole lot more.
Our guide told us that the build he would be demoing was complete enough that a player could start from the cellular level and work all the way through the point where the game’s creatures discover space travel. He even teased us by saying that we could probably even do it ourselves, with the only limitation being one of time. So, he took the controls and started the game. Rats.
Spore, if you don’t know, is the brainchild of Will Wright, the man behind the insanely popular SimCity and Sims games. With Spore, he takes on an even more ambitious concept, with a game that lets players guide an entire lifeform. Players will guide and nurture their budding creation from single-celled organisms to intelligent beings capable of exploring—or dominating, should you prefer—other planets across the galaxy. At the heart of the game is a set of easy-to-use creation tools that allow players to design their own creatures, buildings and vehicles.
In our demo, we skipped past the cellular stage and went right to the second phase of gameplay. If players were starting from scratch, we were told that it would take players about 30 minutes or so to evolve to this point.
We started off with our creature taking its first tentative steps—or wiggles—onto land. Its beginnings were truly humble, as a wiggly little pink thing with four tentacles on one end and a pair of oversized cartoonish eyeballs on the other. After getting onto dry land, it blinked its peepers a few times, shook itself dry and made its way further inland.
At this point, the goal of the game is to further evolve your character into an intelligent being. One way is by interacting with other creatures and either instigating a social or aggressive stance. Since you are, after all, only slightly more impressive than a little pool of goo, you don’t have a lot of other options. As you successfully complete these interactions, you acquire new parts, which you can use to evolve further. You can also score the precious parts from skeletal remains strewn throughout the landscape, though these seemed far less common than living creatures.
The first thing we walked up to was a similarly lowly creature, and we took the friendly approach—singing a little song, accompanied by a little swaying animation and emanating musical notes. For some reason, our song made quite the impression, and we made a new friend—snagging precious new parts in the process. As you interact with creatures, a meter pops up. Fill it up, and you’ve got a new friend—complete with a smiley-faced icon that will make Sims veterans feel right at home.
After a little more exploring, including some foraging from a bush, we attracted a mate. Following a little dance, our coupling ended with the birth of a brand-new baby egg. Finally, a chance to use our new parts! We saw the creature editor again, and were reminded about how flexible the whole setup is. Players start with a basic sausage-shaped torso, which can be stretched, pulled, bent or sculpted in a variety of other ways. In our demo, the creature had the semi-upright stance of a gorilla, with stocky legs and arms. Limbs can be similarly manipulated, with players having the option of turning joints inward or outward, bulking them up or shrinking them down, etc.
With the basic shape and posture defined, it was time to tweak the creature a little more. A pair of hands were placed right where you’d expect to see them, though they could have been jammed just about anywhere on the thing. It really is up to the player to design their own creatures. The hands we saw had the special abilities of being able to strike and gesture—things that would be useful in either a friendly or aggressive encounter.
After adding some eyes on long stalks, an omnivore mouth was placed on the head. Finally, the creature got a little extra something, in the form of some offensive weaponry. A pair of spiked balls were mounted near the elbows, then stretched and shrunken so they more closely resembled spur-like appendages. Unconventional, yes, but sometimes it pays to experiment.
The next step in character creation is deciding on a color scheme. Players can either color in their creature layer by layer, making sure everything is just the way they like it, or by selecting a pattern from a library of sample colorings. We settled on a spiffy yellow and blue getup.
Before setting our creation into the world, we got to see it in action—kind of a last chance to make changes. The creature popped into a fenced-in pen area and walked around for a bit. Players can check out their gait (generated automatically depending upon how the character is designed, not from canned animations) as well as their other actions, such as their dance or attacking animations. Once satisfied, it’s time to explore the world.
Now that the creature is a bit smarter that before, its goals are suitably more ambitious. Whereas before the goal was to find a mate and evolve a little more, now it’s all about organizing your creatures and making sure that they’re the dominant lifeform on the planet. How can you do that? By forming tribes, of course. There’s something to be said for having safety in numbers. You can’t just take a few guys and say they’re a tribe, or at least you can’t do that in Spore. Here, you’ll need to get three creature types in your posse (the official Spore term) to form your tribe. You can do it the nice way, by being social, or by intimidating your quarry into submission. It’s up to you.