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Classroom Facts
Spore contains a relatively high level of classroom facts. While it is extensively simplified, it still includes clearly the concept of growing form a cellular organism to a more complex one. Players also choose to make their creature an herbivore, carnivore or omnivore as the game progresses, cementing those concepts into the player’s mind. The creature creation concept, rooted in simple common sense, presents other concepts clearly; creatures will need eyes to see, hands to collect fruit, and a mouth to eat whatever type of food is compatible with the creature. The act of befriending other tribes in done interestingly, too; players must meet new creatures and mimic their actions to earn their trust.
The game includes math heavily, and also includes a large number of charts and graphs, including one large timeline that spans the life of the player’s creature and lists most every event that has occurred to the player during play.
Creativity & Imagination
By the Gamer:
Spore stresses player creativity on a level that makes anything else incomparable. Players have complete control over the visual and functional features of each of their creatures, and as the game progresses players will continue adding to and enhancing their creature in various ways. Eventually the player is given the opportunity to design different types of vehicles and different buildings, even arranging these buildings within each city they control. All of these creations are shared with others, too, meaning that just as you’re running into other players’ creatures in the wild they’ll be running into yours.
While building your creature is the most impressive creative aspect of the game, each phase of the game leaves the player plenty of room to play around and experiment, most of the time sacrificing linearity for more open-world kinds of situations. The space phase at the end of the game is particularly notable, as there are a huge number of actions the player can choose from starting right at the beginning of the phase, and they only increase in number as time goes on.
By the Developer:
Spore is simply overwhelming. The sheer amount of content in the game is staggering, and the absolute control players have over the construction and development of their creatures is totally unmatched; that data is shared between players all over the world adds untold layers of depth to the whole game.
The five distinct phases that the game plays out over are each distinctly different and have players pursuing distinctly different goals, while still managing to feel cohesive stressing that the player’s actions in each phase will have consequences later on. The phases almost manage to embody different genres, from the simple, arcade-like cell phase to the real-time strategy of the civilization phase to the sprawling, wide-open and exceptionally lengthy final space phase. Between the variety of game mechanics and the unrivaled customizability offered by the creature creator, Spore is a success on all counts; that it is videogames’ best depiction of evolution and growth makes it all the more incredible.
Business Skills
Business skills are an important part of Spore. The first phases of the game have the player earning DNA which allows them to buy (and sell) new parts to add to their creature. As the game progresses players will eventually begin collecting money to outfit their characters in the tribal phase, and the civilization phase has players arranging city buildings to increase production and claiming spice mines to boost income, used to buy new buildings and vehicles. The space phase has players earning and using currency in a wide range of ways; players can earn money by founding colonies, make planets more profitable by working them into more hospitable environments, do jobs for other galactic races and more. Money is spent in at least as many ways; the purchase of new weapons and tools for the player’s ship, new buildings and colonies to inhabit planets, even money as gifts to persuade other colonies from attacking.
The gradual increase in complexity from phase to phase gives this aspect of the game an interesting feel, and the difficulty curve is fairly smooth all the way through (though the final space phase can be intimidating at first). The first phase introduces business skill concepts in a simple, easy-to-handle way that is accessible to anyone, and it introduces to players new ways to earn and handle resources as the game progresses, culminating in the relatively complex examples from the space phases. It’s a great learning tool for videogame business skill in general, and it works within the game extremely well.
People Skills
Spore uses people skills in an interesting way. While there is no actual multiplayer mode available within the game, data is still shared between players all over the world constantly: in any phase of the game, the player may encounter any number of creatures that were created by anyone else who plays online, and others may encounter the player’s creatures as well. While many items come included in the game, the majority of the creatures (and buildings, vehicles etc.) encountered will be those created by other players, with names displayed alongside the creations. Players can browse freely any of the creations that they’ve encountered, even adding creators that they like as friends and including the rest of their creations in the game. This provides an endless supply of new content, keeping the game full of new things to discover constantly.
Also notable is the ability of players to limit the included content to only being that of their friends, an interesting option by itself.
Problem Solving
Problems in Spore change as the game goes along. Early on the player’s goals involve survival, and before long the focus is shifted to social interaction and then what is essentially global domination. Players have control over what exactly these things mean, though; early on players must decide between eating meat and foraging for fruit, and later phases have players deciding to take aggressive, religious or economic paths to global domination.
The cell phase has players swimming in a pool, avoiding large creatures and finding food, stopping every once in a while to enhance their creature. The creature and tribal phases have players interacting with other species, and here players can choose to try to befriend each other species or try to wipe them out. Players can engineer their creatures to exceed on either path; friendlier paths have players collecting special abilities or instruments that are used in a timing-based minigame that makes other creatures friendlier, while more aggressive players can attach horns, teeth and other weapons to their creations. The civilization phase embraces a recognizable real-time strategy format, having players construct cities, manage resources and either attack, convert or buy out other civilizations that share the planet. Throughout all these phases players will concentrate on building up their creature (or tribe of creatures) while dealing with constantly-changing problems. As the game enters the space phase things open up considerably, and players are free to explore a huge number of different planets, interacting with a huge number of other species, and this final phase allows the player to play pretty much however he or she wants. Spore in fact has another overlaying level of problem solving, in that all of the choices made by the player in early stages affect each of the phases coming next.
Simulation
Spore is meant as a simulation of the life, growth and evolution of a species, and while it is clearly a heavily abstracted version it is still recognizable as what it is intended to be. From searching tide pools for bits of food in the cell phase to mimicking the actions of other creatures in the creature and tribal phases, each of these actions is simplified but still clearly rooted in actual examples.
Popularity
Spore has received praise since its release for the amount of content, accessibility, unique game mechanics and overwhelming creation and sharing features. Criticisms have included that the game is too simple (particularly in its early phases).
Controls & Options
Spore offers three difficulty levels, as well as (eventually) the ability to begin play from any of the game’s five phases. Players can also choose to share their creations with friends or with players all over the world. Extensive audio and visual options are available as well.
Tips
Spore received an E10+ from the ESRB with descriptors for Comic Mischief, Fantasy Violence and Animated Blood. |