Spore is classy. While the internet is full of pictures of the hilarious penis monsters made in the Creature Creator, the game itself boasts immaculate presentation. The graphic design is pleasing to the eye, with nary a penis in sight, while Brian Eno plays soothing, emergent melodies on Shatner's Bassoon; a fluffy aural cushion for your thoughts. Most important of all, Spore delivers on its promise — it really works as a 'Sim Everything' game, where you guide the evolution of a life form from primordial sludge to interstellar civilisation. Spore is addictive and fun to play.
It's clear that managing all that complexity was a huge design challenge. Simply dumping thousands of options in your lap would be as alienating as browsing through a phone book — and as pointless. No, all those fabulous add-ons must be earned. Granted, we usually write off unlocking as a gratuitous means of making a simple game look complex. In Spore, it's necessary, and makes a complex game seem simple. By doling out each new eye stalk and poison-injecting spine one at a time, the game lets you build up a better understanding of how they all work, and design your creature accordingly.
The importance of good design is rammed home in the first of five evolutionary eras, the Cell stage. Or, more accurately, the Tidal Pool Nightmare stage. As you move your little translucent critter around gobbling fragments of plants and/or animals, you'll find it surrounded by multitudes of creatures that are faster, deadlier, and much, much larger. Their beaks snap, their tentacles flail, and their horrid eyes look hungrily on your creation. Sure, you can re-spawn endlessly, but you can avoid the trauma of recurring death by adding enough new and improved body parts to get that winning edge.
Progress is addictive. The more you gobble, the bigger you grow — each progress bar filled swells your beastie by an order of magnitude. After two or three billion years of steady progress, you'll earn the right to grow legs and walk onto the land. In the Creature stage, the play style changes from old-school arcade action to role-playing. For the nest of your species is but one of many; you can choose to develop in your crowded corner of your continent by singing and dancing into the hearts of the other species, or by butchering them.
