Spore Creature Creator
I’ve been hearing a lot about a new game called Spore. It was created by Will Wright who is best known for the The Sims and the SimCity series of games. What makes Spore interesting to me is that it “allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture.” Anything that promotes creativity rather than mindless clicking is worth checking out in my book.
The full game is not out yet, but they did release the Spore Creature Creator last Tuesday, June 17th. I picked up a copy for under $10. It’s very easy to use. My niece Adele even helped me make a couple creatures. My first creature was a moose called Magnus. Then I made a lean, mean, flying fighting machine who I named Vincent Vega. You start off with the body where you manipulate the vertebrae to change shape and size. Then you add all the body parts. Each part will add different attributes to the creature such as “charm”, “charge”, “sneak”, “sprint”, “dance” or “sing”, just to name a few. Everything is customizable allowing for an infinite number of possible creatures. Every creature you create can be used in the full game.
You can “test drive” your creature to see its emotions, how it moves, and a variety of other actions. You can take pictures of your creatures and even record movies. Any movies you make, can be uploaded from inside the Spore Creature Creator directly to YouTube.
There is also a Sporepedia site where players can share their creatures online so others can download and use. They are many hundreds of thousands of creatures already. Check out my Spore page.
