Creatures Caves

I'm sure most members of the Creatures Community are already waiting in anticipation of this most wonderful game. For those who have yet to hear of Spore, I think it may be right up your street.

The premise of the game is a simple one. Guide and control the evolution of a creature from the microscopic level all the way up to interstellar spacefaring civilisation.

The game is a genre-spanning entity, all the way from Arcade through Thrid Person and Real Time Strategy to Space Sim. Potentially, this could make it a lot of fun.

I've collected up a few screenshots, and wrote a little commentary on the progression of the game. =)

Tide Pool Phase

In the tide pool phase, you directly control your creature, playing a 2d "eat 'em up" to get from microscopic to smal amphibian.

Creature Phase

We have three dimensions!
After sliming your way out of the ocean comes the Creature Phase. Here you progressively build and refine your creature, battling him out in the world against other creatures for survival. In an interesting similarity to Docking Station, the other fauna populating the world are the creations of other Spore players, downloaded over the internet. Unlike DS though, they are but copies.

Huge Possibilities

As can be seen, there exist vast possibilties for how you want your creature to appear. Some of them are ridiculously stupid, yet supremely fun =P

Tribal Phase

Find yourself a mate, and start a tribe. In this phase of the game your control of a single creature ends, and instead you must preside over a small village population, guiding and improving their developement.

City Phase

As your culture develops and technology refines, your village blossoms into a city.

Civilisation Phase

This is when things go all "Red Alert" on you. Exploring out from the city other civilisations can be found. All these other species will have different appearance, as well as the different architectures, abilities and personality dispositions that go with it. Whether through peaceful integration or military conquest, the aim of this stage, as with any good RTS is world domination.

Space Phase

The world is your oyster. So what now? As technology develops, space travel becomes possible. First planetary and eventually interstellar are within your reach, allowing colonisation of the galaxy. With a vast wealth of biological science at your control you can create your own species, give them a world to live on and play God over them.

Personally, I'm buying this game as soon as it comes out. No actually, I think I'll pre-order. It bears some happy similarities to the Creatures series I know and love, and with the genre amalgam it looks extremely promising. Watching the gameplay video is recommended, since it says far more about the game than I ever could.

Some links regarding the game:
:: Spore Gameplay Video :: (on Google Video)
:: Official Site ::