Spore: Now Coming to Macs

The mastermind behind SimCity and the Sims has brought the world of gaming another virtual life game. Only this time, you control Spores. Just the thought of this game has made me wonder "what next" when it comes to the creativity behind Will Wright.

As stated on the Spore website, Spore is a game where you can create organisms and watch them evolve into other species. You first start out in the Tide Pool phase. This phase is the growth phase where it demonstrates Darwin's "survival of the fittest." It's a time of eat or be eaten. The graphics are not dull and something you would see looking under a regular microscope. Instead, the design of this game is well...cute. Yes, I said it.

Though the Tide Pool phase is in 2D, the regular creature stage (which is the majority of the game play) is in 3D. Your creature evolves as the game progresses. You should be able to reach this stage after approximately and hour of the Tide Pool phase. You meet other creatures and can interact with them, or even eat others. As the game progresses your creature will evolve to be able to do new skills and eat new foods.

Eventually you can reach the tribe stage. You can work together with your tribe to obtain food. This turns into more of a real time strategy game. Specific roles can be given out within the tribe as well. The tribal phase moves onto the civilization phase where you meet with other civilizations. But of course, there's only room for one species to lead the planet. The goal in this stage is to conquer the world.

The game doesn't stop here. Once you have conquered the planet, you can move onto the Space stage and find other solar systems. Now missions start up for your goals to conquer the galaxy.

The actual character (creature) creation can be just as much fun as the regular game play as one can make their very own Spore, choosing eyes, hands, shape, ect. As you gain more evolution points your unlock more parts. You don't just get to choose them from a list, but also stretch and move them around to create something unique based on your imagination.

Spore is scheduled to be released spring of 2008. Previously this title was not going to be for Macintosh but it was announced at MacWorld that it would be also released for Macs. And with the new code wrapper technology, Spore is planned to play as fluidly as the PC version. Unlike other Mac titles that release months after the PC launch, they are trying to get a very close or same release date for both versions.