Spore

[bix]

Another creation by EA/Maxis, designed by Will Wright - Creator of the sims series.

From the mind of Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, comes SPORE™, an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space.

Spore is a "massively single-player" multi-genre game under development by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. 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 land-walking creature, to levels of interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation.

The Spore Creature Creator will be released before the full version on June 17, 2008 so that users can create content for the game before the full version goes on sale. Along with the Full version of the creature creator a free demo of the editor will be released June 17, 2008 with 25 percent of the creature parts available.The full version of the game is due to be released on September 5, 2008 in Europe[3], and September 7, 2008 in North America and other territories.

Platforms: Mac/PC-Windows
Rated E
Another simulation type game. Previewed in E3 sometime ago.

Spore does not fall neatly into any single video game genre. While the game's creators and several media sources describe it as a god game,[9][10] other journalists also describe it as a real-time strategy game[11][12] and life simulation game.[13][14] However, the game is made up of several phases of gameplay that draw on a multitude of games,[15][16] and thus a multitude of traditionally-recognized genres.

Gameplay

Overall, the game allows the player to develop a species from its beginnings as a microscopic organism to its evolution into a complex animal, its emergence as a social, intelligent being, to its mastery of the planet and then finally to its ascension into space, whereupon it interacts with alien species throughout the galaxy. Throughout, the scope of gameplay, the player's perspective and indeed the player's species change dramatically.

It was necessary for the developers to break the game up into distinct yet consistent, dependent "phases". The outcome of one phase affects the initial conditions of the player's species in the next. Each phase, while housing the same creature and player, exhibits its own style of play, and has been described by the developers as ten times more complicated than its preceding phase. While players are able to spend as much time as they prefer in each phase, it is possible to accelerate time or skip phases altogether.

Stacks of info on it in wiki. Use website in quote.

Wright calls the game a "massively single-player online game".[41] Simultaneous multiplayer gaming is not a feature of Spore. The content that the player can create will be uploaded automatically to a central database (or a peer-to-peer system), cataloged and rated for quality (based on how many users have downloaded the object or creature in question), and then re-distributed to populate other players' games.[16] The data transmitted will be very small — only a couple of kilobytes per item transmitted, according to Wright. This was due to procedural generation of material.

A spinoff Spore creatures is a DS game, coming soon.

Creature creation tools (pretty awesome)
[YOUTUBE]http://youtube.com/watch?v=9l02Ker0il0[/YOUTUBE]

Gameplay!!! woah
[YOUTUBE]http://youtube.com/watch?v=FhkGKPV9adw&feature=related[/YOUTUBE]

E3 Review
[YOUTUBE]http://youtube.com/watch?v=t5gTrW_2_mw[/YOUTUBE]

[pyrofyr]

Those graphics, they can't possibly be for the DS, are they? O_O;;;

Are there any videos of the planned DS version?

[Ulyana]

Whyyyy yoooouuuu!!!

I wanted to make the Spore topic...much closer to when it actually comes out. Should be one of the best games this year.

Haha, DS version? PC all the way.

[scuber]

I think I will have to buy this game :D

[Morgana]

OMG. I still play the original The Sims (have 6/8 expansion packs, lol), but this sounds altogether awesome.

Will it require an internet connection to be on the whole time you play? Because I often want a game that's totally offline, in case I'm at my parents with no wireless, etc...

[Ulyana]

Hahahaha I didn't even notice the online component. Actually, that makes it much more awesome - downloading other users' organisms and seeing how they affect your ecosystem.

[Starlit Azure]

I remember talking about this game with my friend 2 years back, its cool to see it actually taking form. :)

[d3k0y]

been...waiting...so long...

*ignores this thread so he can continue wait paitently*

[pyrofyr]

Indeed so, this game started in alpha/coding form like 2~3 years ago, however is just being released now, kinda long even for an average game.

VERY VERY nice to know that it's coming out for PC instead of a console though (It was originally planned for the leading consoles...). I will be grabbing this whenever I get my new PC up off the ground... yea... whenever that is...

[InTraining]

BAH, this game is finally coming out...? Cant wait~