Free Spore Creature Creator
Back in April, we got wind that EA was to deliver a bit of its upcoming Spore to the huddled Sims fanatics in the form of the Spore Creature Creator. The demo will be freely available starting mid-June and give its users 25% of the total building blocks available in the full Spore title launching September 7th.
The Creature Creator gives God-like control over body shapes, colors and some animation sets to be found and used in the boxed title, letting users create unlimited numbers of creatures and then share them online with other users or as an uploadable YouTube video. A retail version will also be available for a moderate ten bucks (or pounds, depending on your side of the Atlantic) that opens up the entirety of the toolset.
It’s a thinly veiled scheme to get users to create content for the full retail game that follows 3 months later. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since it really gets users involved and really being a part of the development. Creatures created and uploaded by users will ultimately become a part of the larger Spore universe when players of the full game begin exploring other planets, an advanced feature of the title.
As we understand it though, the full title won’t take advantage of anything you create. Which raises the question of why the price tag for the otherwise in-game creator. A release from EA today reveals that your specific creature’s abilities in the full September release title rely on events that occur and DNA points you collect in the “Cell Phase”.
So, who knows. Maybe you just have a litte fun with the Creature Creator and get a taste for the whole game, I just don’t see a big advantage to paying for a bunch more Potatohead parts if I’m just gonna get the whole package later in the year. In the absence of the actual demo, have a look at the Creature Creator and Cell Phase of Spore.