In Spore your goal is to raise your own species of creature from its start all along its evolutional chain. This is done with five stages throughout the game: Cell Stage, Creature Stage, Tribal Stage, Civilization Stage, and Space stage. Each of these stages is an actual different genre of game further making spore unique besides the fact that you watch over a species for “billions” of years.
The cell stage is basically a Top-down arcade. The main goal in it is simple, Eat as much as you can as fast as you can; other then collecting parts that’s the main thing to do. Before starting the option to make three different cells is available: Herbivore, Carnivore or an Omnivore. While playing as a Herbivore your main source of food is going to be plankton while eventually upgrading to seaweed as your cell gets larger. The Carnivore however eats bits of meat floating around until large enough to eat smaller cells or attack cells to burst them open and get meat from them. The Omnivore can eat both meat and vegetation so if you’re into having an open path once the creature stage opens up this is the choice to make.
As you continue on killing creatures you’ll eventually start unlocking parts by killing creatures who have parts you don’t have, or you can find them in asteroids or creatures others have killed. As you evolve further and further you’ll start growing and see that you’re now hunting cells who were previously hunting you, so it’s a way of getting revenge. While food you’ll be earning Evolution Points which you’ll spend in the creature editor to buy parts to help you survive. To get into the creature editor you have to send out a mating call, so the creature editor is basically millions of years of adaptions.
Even though this sounds quite simple I must admit its pretty fun especially once you’ve got your character done with all the evolution upgrades. You’ll be top dog for the most part, king of the food chain, hard for other cells to take you down since plenty of defensive parts are now protecting your cell.
Once you finish off the Cell Stage, it’s time to start the Creature Stage. After growing legs it’s time to go on land and further evolve your species. This Portion of the game is a Simulation. During this stage you’ll find you need to eat to stop your creature from dying of hunger. If you made a herbivore you will eat fruits from bushes or high trees if your creature is tall enough; while carnivores will need to hunt other animals. This is where the evolution points come in; you can befriend another species or hunt them into extinction to earn points. Befriending/Hunting another species will also earn you unique parts that the creature has. Another way to find parts is searching bones on the ground. As your creature evolves you get more and more health. During this stage if you are connected to the Spore network you may see creatures created by other users/buddies/ your own creations. In this stage you can make anything as awesome looking, wacky looking, or a real life animal. The only limit is your imagination. But watch out for epics! Epics are giant creatures with a thousand or more hit points. It’s next to impossible to kill them because they can take you out in one hit. When an Epic comes through its common to see entire nests of creatures fleeing the area in fear of dying. One thing I would enjoy doing in this stage is killing off a species that didn’t like mine from the start, or attacked my creatures nest. Once your done running around in packs you’ll be a sentient being and it’s time to start up tribes.
The Tribal Stage is essentially an RTS where you have to take care of a tribe. During this other species are becoming sentient enough to form their own tribes. There are two ways to deal with these other tribes. The first way is by being social towards them: sending them gifts and performing music for them. Gifts are food that you have collected so you’re giving them what they need to survive. When you perform songs depending on how developed the other tribe is you’ll need more instruments. So then you play what they want when you want it and hopefully they’ll like you more. However even if your being friendly to most tribes there’s still the chance of being raided by an enemy tribe.
The second way of dealing with other tribes is to attack them, kill them, and destroy their hut. For this you’ll be able to make weapons, however the ability to do this depends on your actions in the creature stage. If you were very social during the creature stage then it’s probably a good idea to continue in this fashion since it would be easier for your species.
You’ll also need to gather food for your tribe. There are several ways of doing this. If your social then you’ll be occasionally be given food. Carnivores will have to send out members of their tribe to hunt other creatures. There is also the option of fishing and eating that. Herbivores however just need to gather fruit found in bushes and trees. You can also domesticate animals in the wild by giving them food and then you’ll keep them as a pet behind your hut.
After every tribe you’ve defeated or allied yourself with you’ll add on to your totem pole. What I would always do as a little celebration at the end of the Tribal stage I would take all twelve members of my tribe and have them dance around the bonfire at the center of my land. Give it a try its hilarious watching all your tribe members dance together. Now that you’re done dancing around a fire, it’s time to start up a civilization in the next stage.
The civilization stage is also an RTS like the Tribal stage, however this time it’s about building an economy, and building your military/ religion. Depending on how you’ve approached other creatures throughout the game, aggression or with non aggression. All of the opposing cities will be members of your own race just with different beliefs, the way to pass this stage is to convert them to your beliefs, or force them into it. Instead of sending out tribe members to do things, this time you’ll be sending out vehicles “cars”, “boats”, and “planes”; which you will design yourself to look however you want. You’ll also be designing homes, work industries, and entertainment buildings. You must strategically place these in your cities for your people to be happy/ angry and to optimize money made. Once you’ve got the planet conquered where else do you do? To space of course in the Space Stage!
In the Space Stage you’ll be going to space and exploring further then no creature has explored before. Or so you’ve thought, in the creature stage you may or may not have been visited by sentient beings in their own spaceship. However now it’s your turn to go from planet to planet in this god game/ space simulation. You can expand your species to another planet by Terra forming that planet into a suitable environment. You’ll also get to enjoy abducting and relocating animals, even if you’re relocating them planets away and you get to watch them thrive and see the planet grow.
Even though Spore was a great game it was still a letdown in some ways. The game is very short, it’s possible to beat the game within a day if you played it straight through (there is an achievement for this). This is not the original game we were shown where it was more realistic. Instead we got a game with bubble looking creatures and less realistic gameplay. For example there was the ability to stay in the water and create water creatures. However this was scraped from the game among other things because it was too realistic. Instead we were given the colorful Spore we have today.
I would give Spore a solid 8 out of 10
-Theipaz
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