Friday 12 September 2008

Pic of the day: The yellowish spiny blob to the left of the name is my Spore creature, an Ignomarus, in the "cell phase", or pond scum as some reviewers fittingly call it.

Spore phase 1 & 2

I've been playing Spore off and on this week. It is an OK game, but I am not convinced I will play it instead of my regulars, Sims 2 and City of Heroes. I have only played the two first out of five phases, the fifth being longer than the others taken together. As a review, therefore, this entry will suck. Luckily there are dozens of reviews on the Net. This will be merely my passing impressions after some hours of play.

I am mildly surprised that Sims players should be particularly interested in this game. I know it does have two phases that are a bit similar to Sim City, also invented by Will Wright who invented The Sims and Spore. But there is not much similarity to the people simulator here. I have not seen any really humanoid creatures so far, but I have seen many really weird creatures, with odd numbers of eyes, spherical bodies, multiple arms or unidentifiable body parts.

In part this comes down to human creativity, but in part also to the evolutionary process. Your creature start as a simple cell that falls into the water from a meteorite when the planet is young. There you start eating either plants or meat, and grow. Soon you have to compete with other cells. Soon they start hunting you, and possibly the other way around. It is time to add spikes for protection, or cilia for faster swimming, or poison... your little creature grows in leaps and bounds, and perhaps half an hour later you are ready to swim to shore and grow legs.

Something I did not realize the first day was that you have unlimited lives. If you get eaten, you simply hatch as a new individual of the species. (You can sometimes see others of your species swimming around, along with other creatures. Some of the other creatues are made by Maxis, the company, while others are made by fellow players.)

Once on land, you get entirely new body parts (while most of the old ones become useless and should be replaced, but you don't actually need to sell them off - you can keep your spines and cilia as decorations). All through the first and second phase you can also change your colors in whole or in part, including intricate patterns. I tend to stick with the same color scheme for my creatures throughout their lifetime, but this is not a requirement. I belive their colors get locked at the end of phase 2 (creature phase), along with their general body shape. No adding extra eyes or antennae after that.

Before, though, there are two possible reasons to change the body configuration: Either because you like the look, or because some parts are more functional than others. As you wander around, you come across skeletons with genetic material, each adding one new possible body part. The more advanced body parts tend to show up later in your career. This is good, because they cost more DNA. You add DNA to your creature either by destroying other creatures or by befriending them. Befriending is generally safer, but some are naturally hostile and will attack you anyway. Luckily their attitude can be seen from a distance so you can try to avoid the most evil.

If you are connected to the Internet while playing (as is recommended) a number of the creatures you meet are made by other players. They are however not controlled by the other player at the time. They retain the basic properties their player gave them, though, so a carnivore may be tempted to eat you while a herbivore will not. Also, they retain their skills.

If you want to attack fellow creatures (or just defend yourself), you need to add body parts that can function as weapons. Many of these have other functions as well: Mouths, feet or hands can all be used in attacks. There are also dedicated weapons like horns or tail clubs. If you want to befriend fellow creatures, you need body parts that let you sing, dance, charm and pose. Agains, many of these have other functions. But each body part has a certain look. If you want to go with the duck-billed mouthpiece, you cannot get the slighly better song voice that goes with another mouth. So you have to compromise between looks and function. Also, you cannot afford the more advanced parts until later in your career, at which point you may already have stopped evolving and begun to create a civilization. Furthermore it is random what parts you stumble across, except that the simplest are found early on while the most advanced tend to become available later in your career. Still, there is a lot of randomness. If you haven't found a hand yet, you can't have a hand.

As you see, this is a kind of compromise between creation and evolution. Intelligent design is not always pretty, but patience and a clear vision of what you want will help. You are not omnipotent, but you are fairly potent if you take enough time.

Perhaps this game will subtly convert people to belief in guided evolution. I certainly wouldn't mind.

The online part of Spore has a function where you can learn what happens to your creatures on other planets. Just like other people's creatures show up in your game, so your creatures show up in theirs. Whether they befriend your creatures or hunt them to extinction, the game keeps track of it and informs you (although you have to look it up). If you have friends who also play the game, you can track their creatures as well. Evidently my creatures have even advanced to the space phase (the fifth and final) without my help, on some worlds. But it is not quite the same to read about as to see it.

And I suppose that holds for this review too, so I'll stop here.