Spore evolution

Spore is a funny game. It's created loads of hype largely because the man responsible, Will Wright, has been responsible for some of the largest gaming franchises of all time (the Sims being the most recent). I can't decide whether I like the look of the game or not, but it is certainly interesting. The idea is that you start off as a cell and slowly evolve to a planet conquering God. A couple of weeks ago, at the recent GDC five gameplay videos of the different game modes were released.

Phase 1 - Tidepool phase

Phase 2 - Creature phase

Phase 3 - Tribal phase

Phase 4 - Civilization phase

Phase 5 - Space phase

I'm intrigued to see how the transition between the different modes will occur - are they going to be distinct gameplay types or will we be transitioned slowly?

Will Wright keynote

Alice, from wonderland, has also posted the entire Will Wright/ Spore keynote speech from GDC, where he talks about some of the ideas behind the game.

The cloud ray here increases the greenhouses gases... we can play out The Inconvenient Truth here. You can see oceans rising, cities destroyed... I can heat it up too and I can combat the rising levels by heating the planet enough to melt the oceans but that sort of kills off everything. My planet’s melted!

The idea of having an entire planet you can control is very interesting to me, especially since I am controlling that planet having just evolved from a tiny amoeba.

We have this idea of a “Sporeopedia”. It's how we categorise everything you’ve seen so far in this world. This Sporeopedia builds automatically; we took stuff from x-files, star trek, war of the worlds. Eventually you can pull out into interstellar space around our star and we have lots of... look, Hubble objects. The player can go around like a tourist, visiting this little space zoo. It gives people context for things they’re seeing. Here’s an unexploded star, they’re like the birds of the universe, these beautifully coloured things…

The game is going to be vast and creating an encyclopaedia as you play is a very novel approach. Giving people the option to play the game the way they want to play it, creating creatures and objects or playing the different game modes, as well as the passive exploration for the encyclopaedia. It all sounds very interesting indeed.