Will Wright-Lite: Spore Creatures Reviewed

When Spore was first announced, we were nearly overcome with anticipation. The game looked to combine our youthful drawings of imagined monsters with Will Wright’s carefully crafted game design. Last February, it was revealed that the Nintendo DS would receive its own unique game, a slightly scaled back version developed by Foundation 9. Spore Creatures would follow a design document created by Maxis that would expand the adventure elements of the game.

After spending time with Spore Creatures, the game is not what we expected. With the exception of monster creation, the game lacks open-endedness. From the moment our creature hatched from a sea egg, and climbed onto land, he was sent on a series of dull, linear RPG-lite quests. While the gameplay does expand marginally later, by that time we grew disinterested by the early hand-holding in the title.

One of the first activities required of the player is befriending a fellow monster, with is initiated by touching the ‘talk’ icon on the bottom of the screen. If an A.I. character is willing to communicate, they will release rising smile icons, which the player needs to rub against the newly discovered beast. After a few repetitions of this, a flower icon may appear that opens a dance mini-game. Here, players must tap one of several flowers, in time to emerging seeds, Elite Beat Agents style. Often, both the rubbing and dance mini-games must be completed multiple times before a monster will befriend you. Once a beast friends you, you may invite him/her to your two creature entourage.

Other monsters will not respond to communication and are immediacy hostile. If this happens, players are immediately sent to combat mode. Sadly, this is underwhelming; players may use a bio unit to drain enemies of hit points from afar, or touch them to imitate an attack. Perhaps, the developers wanted to keep combat real-time and interactive, but a more strategic battle system would keep this activity interesting after the first few encounters. Strategy is only minimally used when making the decision as to what body parts the player should affix.

The one high point of Spore Creatures was monster creation. As players perform quests, they are rewarded with body parts for one of the seven areas of customization- heads, mouths, arms, legs, bodies, tails, and backs. This aspect of the game offers a comparable, albeit, understandably downsized approximation of the PC creature creator. Players can paint, size and rotate all parts, and animate surprisingly well. Once out of the creation lab, all monsters are drawn in a 2D Paper Mario fashion, and looking quite nice. Overall, this game seems reach for a Phantom Hourglass aesthetic, with plenty of bright green grasses, and azure waters.

Overall, Creatures seems to be aimed at the tween set, which may be tuned into the Spore hype, but could be overwhelmed by all the customization. While adults may find some interest in the portable title, we think they’d be much happier with the complexity with the PC version of the game.