Thoughts on Spore Demo

So I recently acquired the demo for the Creature Creator for the upcoming PC game Spore. For those of you not in the know, Spore is a game that basically combines a lot of different games into a giant, life simulation game. You start out in the primordial ooze as a simple, tiny organism consuming single-celled organisms to evolve, and eventually you create a creature that crawls out of the water and continues to evolve. The game evolves into a Civilization-type city building game, then you gain access to a space ship, where the game becomes a sandbox game, where you can explore the galaxy.

The Creature Creator aspect of the game is being released this Tuesday, a full 3 months ahead of the full game release, in order to satiate gamers hunger for Spore content. Also, it is a blatant cash grab, since the Creature Creator will sell for about $10 and offers no discount for when you purchase the full game. However, this isn't about that, but about the semi-game itself.

It is really amazing. You hear the people working on a game talk about how great it is, but they don't always deliver on the actual content (I'm looking at you, Peter Molyneux and John Romero). However, Will Wright really is right on when he says you are limited only by your imagination. If you can think it, you can make it, as long as you have the patience depending on complexity. You start with basically a lump of clay with a spine. You can make the basic lump longer or shorter, and make each section bigger or smaller. Then, you can add on any number of arms, legs, eyes, "weapons", and such. Even though the demo only contains about 1/3 of the parts of the full Creature Creator, there is a lot to work with there. I had to create about 20 some creatures before I started to feel like I was running out of options.

There are very few limitations on what you can and cannot do. There is what is called a complexity meter, which tells you how complex the creature is. Once it reaches the max, it becomes too complex to be able to operate, and you have to remove some parts before you can place more. I've tried to make creatures with insane amounts of parts just to test the limits, and none of them look like anything you would really want to create.

Overall, I'm really excited about this game all over again. I can't wait to get the full Creature Creator on Tuesday, and I'm even more excited about getting Spore in September. If you weren't too sure of what to think about Spore before, trust me, just download the Creature Creator and it will most likely rest any doubts you had.

Thanks for reading everyone.

Han Offa Primoris