On September 5, two thousand and eight, a new work by Maxis studio was released, with the title Spore, which sounds quite strange in our native language . Expected, as the name implies, they were really big. No wonder, the promise to lead your own species, from the primal life form to the career of an intergalactic adventurer sounds and to this day quite exciting, and the creature editor released earlier presented exceptionally well, offering great opportunities and warming the hope of experiencing something previously unheard of. Creators of the cult The Simswho cut their teeth while creating a simulation of everyday life, guaranteed the creation of a really successful and interesting product. Unfortunately, the disappointment with the not-so-successful work was, nomen omen, considerable. Years later, I decided to look at what went wrong with a more experienced and critical eye and think about what changes should be made for this formula to actually work. However, I will omit the issue of the sick safeguards, which finally bury the simulation of evolution, because more than enough has been said about these.
On the fifth day, he created animals
The game has been divided into five fragments, presenting different stages of the development of living organisms, which quite generally, but still quite accurately groups breakthrough moments in evolution. In the first part, we are dealing with a primal life, simple and not too complicated. We are in control of a tiny organism that wafers in the “primal soup” with only two goals in front of us – to eat and not to be eaten. Although the possibilities for development here are quite limited and the gameplay is trivial, it’s hard to fault anything, unless we really lack a more suitable way of reproducing by dividing. The stage is quite short, so it ends in good time before you get bored of swimming for food. It is also a foretaste of, one could say, the actual game that begins with the moment when
Editor – The only element working around which an attempt was made to make a game
The second stage allows us to play the role of a creature that evolves thanks to interactions with other creatures. Thanks to rummaging in scattered bones, murdering different populations and making friends, we get random elements with which we can improve the life we control. Despite the fact that this is where the beast editor, liked by many, spreads his wings, this is also how the biggest problem of production begins to appear – boredom. A small variety of actions, tasks without much imagination and burdensome repetition clearly indicate that the creators’ creativity ended with creating the beast, and the whole game was forced to form a background for this editor. To this let’s add the fact that the statistics and skills of our ward depend on specific elements of the body and all creative freedom is severely limited. Could it be fixed somehow?
Personally, I would start the renovation primarily by changing the way of acquiring body elements and skills. Instead of randomly acquiring parts with specific properties, I would base the whole thing on experience points. Freedom in deciding which modules to unlock on our own would definitely help creativity, and adding standard, expandable statistics would relieve the need to use specific body parts, and thus, not only could we manage the appearance of the creature ourselves without worrying about its weakness, but it would also make it possible to significantly increase limit, which currently does not allow for a more serious development of the created creature. Of course, there would still be some limitations, such as the requirement to have wings to fly or develop intelligence to evolve to the next stage, but that would be far fairer restrictions.
Civilization Phase – By far the most boring moment in the game
What about gameplay? Here I would bet on a mix of an exploration game with a turn-based combat system, thanks to which you could further develop the concept of herd animals, and maybe even try to implement sea creatures. However, what missions should be created to diversify the gameplay? Here I already lack ideas.
After the wheel is invented, it somehow keeps rolling
When our creature has enough intellect to create a primal civilization after playing with a stick, the game increases the scale, allowing us to control the entire village. Here, too, there were no ideas for a varied gameplay. Gathering food, fishing, simple fighting and entertaining other villages with three instruments is definitely not enough to make the game interesting, especially for a long time. Add to this the almost complete lack of independent decision about the appearance and functionality of the village and a clothes editor with terribly limited possibilities, and we will get a boring and totally uninteresting proposal to spend time. The situation changes a bit in the next phase, where we get vehicles to fight, convert to the right faith, or bribe our opponents, and we also decide on the location of our buildings in the city. Here, too, everything is horribly simplified, uninteresting, simply boring. Building and vehicle editors may seem interesting, and in fact they allow you to let your imagination run wild a bit, but getting as many as six things to personalize at once is a sheer satiation, so what just works becomes repulsive.
What prompted me to describe these two stages together? In addition to the fact that the overly simplified formula does not allow me to write more about them, trying to fix this part of the game, I would combine them, making them something like games from the Civilization series . This form of play fits perfectly into the evolutionary nature of Sporeand at the same time allows you to follow different paths to achieve world domination. Admittedly, the problem of excessive construction in this case is exacerbated, but the possibility to choose from different kits as a default option could alleviate the above-mentioned overload. The only thing left is the clothes editor, but it seems to me that the current technology responsible for physics would allow to refine this element by adding even loose materials.
A little patience and combined can give amazing results
Star Direction! There must be some civilization there!
The final stage of fun in Sporeis reaching for the stars, where we sit at the controls of a pioneering spacecraft to discover new planets, terraform and colonize them, get to know other civilizations, trade or fight with them, eliminate piracy and perform randomly generated missions. There is much more content here than in the previous parts of the game, and the light repetition does not irritate that much, but here, too, the creators did not avoid serious mistakes, which definitely have a negative impact on the reception of their work. Once again, the building editor with the stubbornness of a maniac appears every time we want to fill a colony with houses and factories on a new planet. The annoyance of this solution completely kills the pleasure of settling in new worlds, although it is nothing compared to random events, such as attacks by alien civilizations or animal plague. What’s the problem? Well, for some reason we are the only thinking creature of our race, so the lack of our reaction to these events results in their negative ending, and this can even lead to the loss of planets or systems. Add to this the fact that the operations of our ship are the only way to increase our financial capabilities and look for a market for spices or products of inhabited celestial bodies is done “blindly” and so, instead of exploring the farthest corners of the galaxy, we are forced to constantly fly around their own completely dependent estates.Stellaris.
Since there are opportunities to fix the creation created by Maxis with better and more modern solutions, can we expect that someone will focus on the topic and try to create a similar production? I doubt it. Unfortunately, the very poor reception of the evolution game rather distracts you from trying to take a risk with this formula of play. It should also be noted that the ideas I have quoted most often refer to solutions known from strategies, and this is a genre that is far from being a spectacular success, with the exception of brands that have established a stable position over the years. Anyway, how obvious is SporeIt turned out to be a huge disappointment, so my suggestions to fix the title are not the only right option and everyone can let their imagination run wild on this topic. Have you ever thought what a better version of the evolution game could look like? If so, please share your ideas in the comments!
