Spore [Sneak Peek] Preview

by Rosana Kooymans

Foreword
I was recently invited on February 12 at EA UK, so I could get a sneakpeek of Spore! I was of course very excited to go there, also to see and play Spore. I had already seen and played Spore on E3 in 2006 and on the Games Convention in Leipzig in 2006. But I 'only' got to play with the creature editor there. And this time, I was able to play with the game itself as well! So that's a huge difference and definitely worth it! There was just one thing that might be a bit of a problem for me when writing this preview. We were not allowed to take any pictures of the game. So we won't have any exclusive pictures. We did get a few 'exclusive' screenshots of the mobile version of the game. However, we discovered that those exclusive screenshots already have been posted on the net, on other gaming and press websites. Therefore, we also do not have any exclusive material. But we do have some in-game experience now. And that's what I'll be telling you about in this preview.
The big question is, where do I start? As you may know, besides two Spore fansites, I also run three Sims fansites. With Sims expansions, I find it quite easy to write previews. When previewing an expansion pack, you expect people to already know a bit of the base game. And once a person knows the base game, 'all' you have to is explaining what's new in the expansion pack. With Spore, this is very different for me. Spore is an entirely new game. For those of you who do not know what Spore is all about, I have to explain it from the start. I'll do my very best though. I hope you will enjoy this preview.
I will mainly concentrate on the PC version of the game. We got a fair amount of time to play all versions (PC, Nintendo DS and mobile). However, the PC version of Spore has so much you have to see and play before you can properly understand it, let alone describe it. I hardly had any time at all to concentrate on the DS and mobile. Also, the DS version is, like most DS games, more like an adventure game. That makes it very hard to write a preview about it. There's a story line in the DS version you HAVE to follow. You can't just go in the game and jump in any phase like the PC game. Therefore I will tell you what I know about the DS, but it won't be too much.

'Sim Everything'?
Spore was once described as 'Sim Everything'. I actually can't agree. I love Sims games, I own basically every Sim game, old and new. But in my opinion, you can't even compare SimCity (or any other Sim game) and Spore. Thomas Vu recently described Spore as 'universe in a box'. And I think that's a good (short) description.

The 5 phases
In Spore, you have five phases; Tide Pool Phase (also known as the Cell Phase), Creature Phase, Tribal Phase, Civilization Phase (aka City Phase) and Space Phase. I'll try to explain these phases to you below.

Tide Pool Phase
In The Tide Pool Phase, you'll be a very tiny cell creature trying to survive by eating other cell creatures. This is kinda like Pacman. Pacman runs around eating and surviving. Pacman is also running from more dangerous creatures. In the cell phase in Spore, you can eat many creatures that are smaller than you are. And by doing that, you will grow into a bigger cell creature. The fun part is, that you can see the bigger cell creatures vagely and blurry on the background. By just eating other cell creatures, your cell creature will unlock upgrades. With every upgrade, you can 'pimp' your cell creature by adding parts. These parts can benefit you in many ways as you work your way up. For example: there are parts which will give your cell creature a speed boost, so it can swim faster. Your creature will, once you have enough experience, evolve into the next stage, which is the Creature Phase.

Creature Phase
The Creature Phase is very cool. As a creature, you will be doing lots of different things than a cell creature. A creature will of course, also try to survive around other creatures. But I consider the Creature Phase to be more challenging. For example, your creature has to reproduce in order to get upgrades. These are the same kind of upgrades you have in the cell phase. With the upgrades, you can modify your creature and add more parts or just change them. During the game, you will find skeletons. Be sure to pick these up, because they will unlock new parts for your creature.
Something that stayed throughout the game was the singing. Yes, singing. Your creature will run into other creatures and to communicate, you have to let your creature sing. If the other creature likes the singing, they will befriend each other. If the other creature does not like it, he will just walk away.

Tribal Phase
The Tribal Phase looks a lot like the Creature Phase, but has some extras. For starters, you now form a small colony with other creatures of your own kind. This colony lives in a very tiny settlement, with only a few buildings. In the Tribal Phase, it's no longer just about your creature. It's about a whole group of those creatures. You and your kind will look for other colonies to get social and make friends. Your colony will try to make as many friends as possible, so later on you can form an ally once you're in the Civil Phase. You can expand the settlement with more buildings and tools. The idea here is basically to prepare yourself for the Civil Phase.

Civilization Phase
Once you've reached the Civilization Phase, you will have a city instead of a small settlement. In this phase, you will be able to build and modify vehicles, so your civilization can transport themselves around. The goal here is to conquer other pieces of land on the same planet your living on.
You can achieve world domination through three methods. Of course there is the military way: just blow up every other creature you meet. If you play the religious way, you'll have to convince other creatures to follow your lead. The economic method is the diplomatic one, with which you allie with other species and cities.

Space Phase
The Space Phase is the 'final' phase if you can call it that. You can now visit other planets with your UFO. And on those planets, you can abduct different species. You can modify these species or drop them on different planets. It can all be done.

Now I'll try to explain all the different editors to you. There are -I believe- 5 different editors.

Creature Editor
With the Creature Editor, you can edit creatures from beginning to end. When in the Cell Phase, you can edit your cell creature. After you enter the Creature Phase, you can still use the same editor. Only this time, it will offer different parts for you to buy with DNA points. And these DNA points can be collected by completing goals in the game. The Creature Editor allows you to make the creature you have in mind. There aren't many boundaries to it.

Building Editor
When you enter the Tribal Phase, you will be able to edit and create buildings for your tribe. Much like the other editors, you can add or remove things from your buildings.

Vehicle Editor
In the Civilization Phase, you will be able to give your creatures vehicles and such. These vehicles can be made and edited in the vehicle editor. Just like the creature editor, you can add parts, give them patterns and colors. Basically you can make any vehicle you want with just a little imagination.

UFO Editor
You won't be needing UFO's until the Space Phase. But once you are able to use an UFO, it's nice to be able to make and edit one.

Music Editor
When I heard the music in the game, I almost fell in love right away with it. It sounds like SimCity music. All SimCity players will probably know enough if I say just that. To be more specific I can try to explain it to you. It's background music. Calm, you can hear it, enjoy it, but it won't start to bore you soon. And the most fun part of it all is that you can compose the music yourself. You can create custom music in the game. These custom sounds can be used in your game while playing. Every aspect of the game has different music. When in the editors, you will hear different music. When playing, you will hear different music. Having your own composed music in the game makes it that much more interesting. Whenever you get bored by some of the music, you just create new music to listen to.
I also heard about music video clips you can make yourself. In the creature editor, you can play around with different backgrounds and actually create movies. Afterwards, you can upload these to youtube.

Sporepedia
When comparing the Exchange (from The Sims 2) with Sporepedia, you will immediately realize that the Sporepedia is much better in many ways. With Sporepedia, you stream other players content right into your game. You can also find all of your own creations in your Sporepedia. As I've understood, you will be able to tag your own creations.
If you create stuff, you can track where it's going. You can also see what other players do to your creature. With that I mean, how they edited your item.

Sporecasts
Sporecasts are collections of your favorite creatures, buildings and more. You can add your own items in a Sporecast and those from others. When you have tagged your Sporecast, other people will be able to find the items in it. You can share Sporecasts with other players. Someone had made the entire alphabet. Creatures that were A-shaped, L-shaped. You should see how they walk, really funny!

MySpore Page
I noticed the 'myspore page', which should be the same thing as a mysim page, but for Spore. I'm guessing later on, we'll be able to see our creations on the myspore page online.

Buddies
There are buddies in the game. I assume you can find friends and add them as buddies. This makes it look like a social networking site. And that's also what they are trying to achieve, as I understood from the demo and talk we had with Thomas.

Community & Fansites
As for fansites, I don't know how exactly we'll be able to share our own creations on our own fansites. But Thomas did mention something about uploading. It's still very unclear to me how. I will showcase my own creations on my personal Sporepedia website!

This was the PC preview. I will now tell you a bit about the DS version.
The DS version of Spore is more like an adventure game. People that have other DS games like The Sims 2, The Sims 2 Pets or MySims, will recognize this way of playing. You can't jump in anywhere you like. It does not work that way on the DS. So I have not been able to see a whole lot of the DS game (only the beginning). It starts with one creature (yours) that runs into another. They talk and then you find out about an evil mind trying to infect the planet. You will form a protection pact and then the game begins.

Afterword
I would like to thank EA UK for inviting us in the first place. And I would especially like to thank Anita from EA Netherlands for making this possible for us! I really enjoyed the event. I now have a more clear understanding of the game. I found it very hard at first to understand the game by just reading press articles and viewing some screenshots or videos. It's not the same. Before playing the game, it felt like an unsolved puzzle. Now I finally played the game myself, most of the missing pieces have been found. So, again, thank you EA for inviting us!

As I mentioned above, I now actually get every part of the game. And it makes me want the game even more! One big thing I didn't really experience myself before is the amount of humour in the game. The game really contains a lot of humour. Which is something I did not expect at first. Then again, it is a game by Maxis. There's no Maxis game I know that isn't fun or doesn't contain humour. I know that right now, it's mostly men that are drawn to this game. That's not a bad thing, but I think most women would also like the game, once they find out about the fun in this game. I really can't wait anymore!

Can't get enough of all the Spore articles and previews? Then check out these articles as well: Spore Sneak Peek article by The Spore Zone, which is written by my cute boyfriend ChEeTaH! There is one other fansite preview, written by Spore-Net. But it is in Dutch only, just so you know. Spore-net was one of the other fansites on that Spore event day. Click here to read their preview!