Post by wetpaint on Dec 21, 2006 0:10:17 GMT -5
Well I know this is very old news, but I just thought I would get a thread going about it anyway, since I didn't see one here. So Will Wright (who made the Sims) is now applying his creative energies to a game called Spore.
In this game, you bascially guide a species through their entire lifespan. You start out as a little microbe in the primordial soup, swimming around. At this point the game is like a 2D arcade game. Like PacMan, you swim about and eat berries while avoiding the bad guys. Eventually you eat enough things that you grow some more and become just a small creature, but not an amobea. At this point the game gains graphics, and becomes 3D. You swim around for a while and then come out of the water. Now you just wander around, finding food so you can survive and avoiding bad creatures. You can slowly earn "DNA Points" which allow you to add things to your creature and change how it functions. After playing like this for a while, you move up into an RTS, like WarCraft, in which you control a whole tribe of the creatures you evolved. As their technology increases, the game turns into SimCity, where you design and place buildings in a city. Then it becomes Risk, where you expand your city and try to conquer the entire planet. After that, when your technology is high enough and your creatures have evolved enough, you can go into space. Colonize and terraform other planets. Do battle with aliens. Etc.
While this may seem short here, each phase of the game is actually a game unto itself, so this takes a good LONG while to complete all of Spore. Plus the Space Game at the end is open-ended and doesn't ever end.
It is interesting to note that all the content in Spore, all the plants and the creatures on your planet and other planets is generated by other players. So when you create any creature, it is uploaded into their databse and put into other people's games. You don't play AGAINST them, your creature just happens to populate their game. Cool idea.
Some pics.
In this game, you bascially guide a species through their entire lifespan. You start out as a little microbe in the primordial soup, swimming around. At this point the game is like a 2D arcade game. Like PacMan, you swim about and eat berries while avoiding the bad guys. Eventually you eat enough things that you grow some more and become just a small creature, but not an amobea. At this point the game gains graphics, and becomes 3D. You swim around for a while and then come out of the water. Now you just wander around, finding food so you can survive and avoiding bad creatures. You can slowly earn "DNA Points" which allow you to add things to your creature and change how it functions. After playing like this for a while, you move up into an RTS, like WarCraft, in which you control a whole tribe of the creatures you evolved. As their technology increases, the game turns into SimCity, where you design and place buildings in a city. Then it becomes Risk, where you expand your city and try to conquer the entire planet. After that, when your technology is high enough and your creatures have evolved enough, you can go into space. Colonize and terraform other planets. Do battle with aliens. Etc.
While this may seem short here, each phase of the game is actually a game unto itself, so this takes a good LONG while to complete all of Spore. Plus the Space Game at the end is open-ended and doesn't ever end.
It is interesting to note that all the content in Spore, all the plants and the creatures on your planet and other planets is generated by other players. So when you create any creature, it is uploaded into their databse and put into other people's games. You don't play AGAINST them, your creature just happens to populate their game. Cool idea.
Some pics.