Simon’s Blog

I’m almost done with Spore. It’s a fantastic game and a technology showcase for procedural generation. Spore is the brain child of the master game developer Will Wright. He also brought us SimCity and The Sims. Wright has always wanted to create a ‘Sim Everything’ type game, and after eight long years of development he has finally succeeded. Nearly everything in Spore is created by the player. Every creature, vehicle and building can be created from scratch. The possibilities are endless and creativity is rewarded. Spore is neatly broken up into 5 categories, spanning the evolutionary process from primordial soup to galactic conqueror. While playing the game you feel like God and Charles Darwin at the same time.

The Phases

• Cell
• Creature
• Tribe
• Civilization
• Space

I documented most of my gameplay and produced a short video. I played as a carnivore so I was very aggressive and killed almost everything I saw. But you can also play as a herbivore and never kill a single creature.

Spore was released for PC and Mac on September 7th, 2008. Version’s for most other platforms, including the Wii and Xbox 360 are planned. There is also an iPhone version of the game, Spore: Origins, which reduces the game’s scope to the cell phase. Spore: Origins allows you to take a picture with your iPhone and skin your creature with your photo, very cool! I took a picture of my cat for a cool tiger stripped cell dude.

The Spore Creature Creator has been released in anticipation of the full game release in September. Will Wright has outdone himself, this game looks amazing. Download it immediately and see what creature your imagination can generate. Here is what I came up with.


Hit the jump for a larger picture and description.
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