Many Mac and PC gamers must have heard of SPORE by now. It’s a simulation game that debuted on September 7, 2008. That’s today. It was developed by MAXIS, the same game company that developed SimCity (1989), The Sims (2000) and other simulation games. For those who like simulation games, SPORE can be a great game to look forward to playing. If you don’t like them… Let’s see. Personally, I don’t like SimCity 4, The Sims and The Sims 2 because there are no clear objectives. I prefer games where I can play one campaign after another to increase my game skills. But I can say that I like this game quite a lot so far.
So what kind of game is SPORE, anyway? Again, it’s a simulation game. More precisely, it’s a simulation game of the evolution of the mankind. Like Civilization III and Civilization IV from Firaxis Games? Not quite… Imagine that those human characters in The Sims 2 originally evolved from tiny bacteria-like creatures millions of years ago. That is, you will start with a mere monad (or maybe a creature with more than one cell) in SPORE. This is the only character you will control in the first stage. Something will happen to this species after it eats and/or kills other creatures and acquires knowledge. Eventually, your species will evolve into a reptile with arms and legs.
Cell Stage
There are a few important choices that you have to make when you first start out. The most important choice to make is whether your creature will be a carnivore or a herbivore. (See Screenshot 01.) Another choice is the game difficulty level. (See Screenshot 02.) After making those choices, a cinematic scene will show that you arrive on a planet in a meteorite and enter water. (See Screenshot 03.) In the next 20 minutes or so, that will be your battle ground. It’s a simple species with body parts including eyes, mouth and a tail only. If you play a herbivore, you can find green cells here and there. (See Screenshot 04.) If you are playing a carnivore, your creature has to take red cells (meat) or eat other living creatures. Now, the immediate objective is to eat food and grow larger.
 Screenshot 01 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 02 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 03 – Source: MacHouse |
The ultimate goal of this stage is not exactly to make your creature grow larger. If your creature just stayed in water to eat food and attack other species, you would waste the money you invested in this game. Rather, the ultimate goal is to make your species evolve into a reptile so that you can move on to the next stage. There’s a progress bar shown at the bottom of the game screen. (See Screenshot 05.) In fact, this progress bar will move to the right as your creature eats food. Food doesn’t come by easily in the real world, right? It won’t in this game, either. Whether you play a carnivore or a herbivore, your creature must fight for survival and evolution.
 Screenshot 04 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 05 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 06 – Source: MacHouse |
Soon, you will be advised to click on the button at the bottom. (See Screenshot 06.) Calling a mate? What for? If you click on this button, your creature will send a signal to find a mate of the same species. (See Screenshot 07.) If it finds one, then your creature and its mate will get married. You don’t make them marry each other to increase the number of this species. You should find a mate to your creature when you want to add parts and change colors. (See Screenshot 08.) That means you don’t necessarily have to find a mate to your creature unless you want to work on its body parts and design.
 Screenshot 07 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 08 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 09 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 10 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 11 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 12 – Source: MacHouse |
Actually, body parts don’t come by automatically as your creature progresses, either. In order to expand your body part list, you have to find part tokens. You do get the first one for free, though. (See Screenshot 09.) You can find a part token inside a meteorite in water. (See Screenshot 10.) But you won’t often see many of them. One way of finding part tokens is to fight and kill bigger creatures, ones with body parts, which your creature doesn’t have. For example, a pink creature shown in Screenshot 11 is much bigger than my dark red fish. And a reward for fighting this big guy is… It’s another part token. (See Screenshot 12.) There is also a good chance that you can get free part tokens if you stick around a gigantic creature. (See Screenshot 13.) Of course, you don’t really want to do that unless you are desperate because your creature can fall a prey itself.
Okay. Once again, why would you want to find a mate to your creature? Food or prey will be more and more difficult to come by as you progress. You need weapons like jaws, spikes, poison and electric nozzles to eat and/or kill foes effectively. (See Screenshot 14.) You will also need fins so that your creature can swim fast and keep up with its game.
 Screenshot 13 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 14 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 15 – Source: MacHouse |
Finally, if the progress bar expands all the way to the right, your species will evolve with legs and get on land. (See Screenshot 15.)
Creature Stage
In this stage, again, you will only have control over the character that you have initially created. The ultimate goal is the same. You have a progress bar at the bottom of the screen. But the way you progress is different in this stage.
There are three ways by which you can progress.
- Impress other species.
- Attack and kill other species.
- Find your migrating species.
 Screenshot 16 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 17 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 18 – Source: MacHouse |
There are two buttons above the progress bar. (See Screenshot 16.) If you click on the green button, your stance towards other species will become friendly. If you click on the red button, your stance will become aggressive. For example, if I select a creature from a different species and click on the Social Stance button, a message shown at the top left corner says ‘Impress’ 3 of them to make them your ally and also earn 25 DNA points. (See Screenshot 17.) If I click on the Combat Stance button at the same instance, the message will change. Now, it says ‘hunt’ 3 of them to earn 25 DNA points. (See Screenshot 18.)
So how does your creature impress other species? Simply, set your stance to social and click on a creature. Then the creature being selected will perform 3 to 4 acts (sing, dance, charm, pose), one at a time. If it sings, then click on the sing icon. (See Screenshot 19.) And your creature will sing. Impressing other species is not so easy at the beginning. When you first start out, your creature knows how to perform only one or two acts. In Screenshot 19, the level of singing for the purple creature is only one. Any of the acts can go as high as Level 5.
 Screenshot 19 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 20 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 21 – Source: MacHouse |
If you want your creature to master more acts or increase skills, you need to collect part tokens at first. Then you can purchase parts after finding a mate to your creature. (See Screenshot 20.) Okay. But how do you find part tokens in this stage? Well, there are two ways of find them.
- Find bones
- Impress alpha creatures
If you let your creature just walk around, you can find bones here and there. (See Screenshot 21.) Click on the shinning part, and you will get a part token. There is a mini map at the bottom left corner of the game screen. A question mark indicates the nest of an unknown species. (See Screenshot 22.) If you visit other species, you will frequently run across bones that resulted from decayed bodies. The other way of collecting a token is to kill or impress a creature whose name starts with alpha. (See Screenshot 23.) This alpha creature will give you the part inherent in its species.
 Screenshot 22 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 23 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 24 – Source: MacHouse |
By the way, what is the migrating thing all about? While your creature is away from its nest, the rest of the species may migrate. Follow the trace in the mini map, and find a new nest. Upon reunification, the whole family will get exalted. (See Screenshot 24-5.) And you will get DNA points as a result.
 Screenshot 25 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 26 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 27 – Source: MacHouse |
Your creature and its allies can get injured after a battle. There are a few ways by which you can heal injured units.
- Eat food.
- Visit the home nest, ally’s nest or dead site.
If your creature eats food, the heath meter will recover. If you bring injured creatures back to the nest, they will quickly recover from injuries. (See Screenshot 26.) By the way, if you eradicate an entire species, its nest will become yours. In a mini map, this nest will be marked in red. (See Screenshot 27.) You can also return injured units there for quick recovery.
By the way, just like there are four different ways of impressing other species, there are also four different ways of fighting them. These four combat modes are bite, charge, strike and spit. Again, all combat modes are not available at the beginning. (See Screenshot 28.) So you need to buy combat parts after collecting tokens.
 Screenshot 28 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 29 – Source: MacHouse |
 Screenshot 30 – Source: MacHouse |
Once in a while, you will witness an amazing scene. (See Screenshot 29.) This planet is inhabited with gigantic creatures. If you see a space ship, you’d better let your creature flee from the scene. Or it can be abducted.
When the progress meter reaches the right end, click on the advance button at the right bottom corner. And you will enter the Tribal Stage.
By the way, both Mac and Windows versions of the game are included in the same DVD. So you can install SPORE on your Mac partition or Windows partition, whichever you prefer.
Developer: Maxis
Website: http://www.spore.com/
Genre: Simulation
Price: US$49.95
System requirements: Intel Core Duo with1 GB RAM and 128 MB video RAM 2.0 for Mac (Mac OS X 10.5.3 or higher) / GHz P4 processor with 512 MB RAM and 128 MB Video RAM for Windows XP / 2.0 GHz P4 processor with 768 MB RAM and 128 MB Video RAM for Windows Vista
Multiplayer: Available
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