DESCRIPTION

Oversee life from its simplest form to its most complex in Spore, designer Will Wright's first original game since 2000's The Sims. As a microorganism on a new world, you must survive and thrive in your liquid environment by darting back and forth, feeding, and avoiding potential predators. Absorbing food such as plankton or algae during your formative days also allows you to absorb the DNA necessary to evolve into a terrestrial animal. Similar to a role-playing game, Spore lets you customize your being in an assortment of ways, with swappable body "parts" influencing attributes such as speed, strength, and so forth.

While you are encouraged to tinker around with your creature and its environment, the game's underlying structure involves progressing through five distinct phases: cell, creature, tribe, civilization, and space. Each rung in the game's evolutionary ladder follows your creature as it becomes a sentient being capable of performing a variety of tasks. You will develop a culture, conquer rivals, build cities, design vehicles, and even travel to other planets throughout the galaxy. Though Spore was designed as a single-player experience, the game's universe is comprised of worlds and creatures designed by the online community. ~ Scott Alan Marriott, All Game Guide