8224 - Spore

[scottobear]

Why didn't anyone tell me about Spore sooner? veblefetzer hosted this gameplay video, and I'm pretty dang impressed. Now *that*'s my kind of sandbox.

The game allows the player to begin with developing a creature as a cellular entity and eventually creating a creature with more sophisticated brain functions, which will change the nature of the game to a more RTS-type game (he cited a particular favorite of his, Populous), where players will control herds of creatures. Once you upgrade the "hut" around which the creatures centralize, the game changes into what he called "a simple version of SimCity" where the player manages technology and interacts with other cities that have sprung up around the world.

The creature creation tool is quite simply amazing, not to mention the programming that regulates (automatically!) how the creatures walk, run and move

He demonstrated how the player can eventually purchase a UFO to travel between planets--and eventually star systems--to populate, conquer, or simply observe. Particularly impressive was the game's emergent gameplay and seemingly infinite possibilities for playing creatively

Definitely worth a BANGS!

[edit - more info on Spore here, at wikipedia. sharp!]

SporeWiki - A wiki dedicated to all things Spore.

Spore Portal - Spore fansite.

Spore Monsters - Spore news and rumours site.

Comments

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping the gameplay is as good as the design stuff.... Will Wright has made a lot of great games already, but this could really be a zenith of sim game design. I mean, where do you go from there?

I'm glad it's not a massively on-line game, too - shared designs are good, but the last thing something that spiffy needs is a bvunch of jerky twinks wrecking the universe.

[rhyyss.livejournal.com]

First heard about this maybe a year ago it seems like, but it was just in the conceptual stage at that time. The story was mostly about how flexible the modeling software was - instead of illustrating every conceivable critter, they simply (!) wrote really good code to allow whatever was designed by the player to be displayed.

Yeah, this is going to be mega-huge.

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

the model design looks more interesting to me than anything else! those sorts of algos can be applied to any sort of game.. imagine how easy it'll be to build custom skins and models for other games, now? Once the toolkit is released, I think it might really step up game design as a whole.