Spore: Preview and OverviewFebruary 14th, 2008

I feel like my short little bit of information about this game just didn't do it justice, and now that there is a full on preview available, I wanted to take some time to talk about just how amazing this game will be. So before I get to the preview, lets talk a bit about just what this game hopes to accomplish.

An Overview: The Sims on Steroids?

It could be said that Spore intends to be just that, the Sims on steroids. This is largely due to the fact that you basically get to play God, and control a being from their very beginning all the way to their bitter end. This goes beyond life and death; starting with the evolution of life within the primordial ooze and ending with the extinction of your species. However simple this concept seems, the possibility of producing a game where the player has nearly limitless control over the way a creature evolves left meaning thinking the game would never be finished. That is, until a release date of September 7th, 2008 was set.

Okay, so Spore has the intention of being a game which lets you control a species from start to finish. This is an impressive feat on its own, if you consider several major implications. The game has to be playable. This is one of the things that I would consider the most difficult part of a game like this. With the ability to customize such a wide range of options, how can it even be playable? Well, this is where Spore really begins to shine. Your customizations can be as detailed or dull as you wish. For example, if you want to build a factory, you don't have to add all the little details, a cube with a smokestack will suffice, according to the bit-tech preview. This allows the game to satisfy hardcore gamers or someone who just wants to jump right in and not spend time on every little detail. And supposedly, again according to the bit-tech preview, the tools and interface are designed well enough so that the tools can be easy to use, but also can be as complicated as you want to make them. This flexibility is one of the greatest things about this game, and makes it so that playing it over and over should still produce an exciting experience every time.

Another great thing about this game is the Sporecasts, or the way in which it allows you to share creatures with other people that play the game. In fact, the game relies on this ability, as it populates the world with creatures that other people have created. This is a great feature, as it will constantly be expanding and changing as more and more people join on the game. According to bit-tech, there is already a wide range of content available, and the file sizes are incredibly, small, so gathering large amounts of different creatures will not take up vast amounts of hard drive space. This is one of the great things about this game; it will expand as more and more people play it, making the possibilities for repeated playtime limitless.

Style of Gameplay

The game is split into five stages, the single-cell stage, the creature stage, the tribe stage, the civilization stage, and finally, the space stage. Each stage has a different feel and style of play, and each stage takes you along the different levels of evolution. The game allows you to customize everything throughout each individual stage, for example during the civilization stage you can customize the building styles.

I still feel as though the sharing of creatures will make this game incredibly successful, and if you want to learn more about the gameplay and see some screenshots, jump over to the bit-tech preview, or they also had a chance to talk with Thomas Vu, the producer for the game. If you have something else you think will be incredibly great about this game, let me know over on the Forums!

Copyright © Kyle Diedrick and Graphics Unplugged 2008, All Rights Reserved