- For the Nintendo DS game, see Spore Creatures. For the mobile, iPod, and iPhone game, see Spore Origins. For the unrelated Commodore 64 game, see Spore (Commodore 64). For the unrelated MS-DOS game, see Spore (DOS).
Spore is a multi-platform god game under development by Maxis and designed by Will Wright that allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a multicellular organism, through development as a sapient and social land-walking creature, to levels of interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. The game has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation.
The game is due to be released on September 5, 2008 in Europe and September 7, 2008 in North America and other territories.
Procedural generation
Spore extensively uses procedural generation, rather than individual objects. Wright mentioned in an interview given at E3 2006 that the information necessary to generate an entire creature would be only a couple of kilobytes, according to Wright, who presented the following analogy: "think of it as sharing the DNA template of a creature while the game, like a womb, builds the 'phenotypes' of the animal, which represent a few megabytes of texturing, animation, etc."
Spinoffs
Three spinoffs are also being released on the same day as the main version.
Spore Creatures
Spore Creatures for the Nintendo DS focuses on the Creature phase. The game will be a 2D story-based roleplaying game as the gamer plays a creature kidnapped by a UFO and forced to survive in a strange world, with elements of Nintendogs.
Spore Origins
Spore Origins is the mobile, iPod, and iPhone spin-off, and will focus on a single phase of gameplay; in this case, the tide pool phase. The simplified game will allow players to try to survive as a multicellular organism in a tide pool, similar to flOw. The iPhone version takes advantage of the device's touch capabilities and 3-axis accelerometer.
Unnamed Wii Spinoff
A Wii spinoff of the game has been mentioned by Will Wright several times, such as in his October 26 2007 interview with the Guardian. Buechner confirmed it, revealing that plans for a Wii spinoff were underway, and that the game would be built from the ground up and would take advantage of the Wii remote, stating, "We're not porting it over. You know, we're still so early in design and prototyping that I don't know where we're going to end up, so I don't want to lead you down one path. But suffice to say that it's being developed with the Wii controls and technology in mind."