Evolution Gets Pixelated and Playable with Spore

Is anyone else biting at the bit to play this game?

I have been following the progress of Sims guru Will Wright in his latest creation, Spore, which attempts to make a game out of evolution.

Life and eventually culture is playable in a succession of phases, which are linked on the timeline of guided development: molecular, cellular, creature, tribal, civilization, terraform and galactic. Wright has incorporated much of his previous projects into Spore, heavy on the SimCity once you hit the tribal phase. More below the fold, including a longer video tutorial.

Development seems to rely on the ability to reproduce, which is make possible by - what else - eating. At the cellular stage, your little cell gobbles up surrounding food particles until it can produce an egg. At this point, an interactive tool pops up, and you choose modifications like defenses or changes in sensory perception or greater locomotion. Quite frankly, it sounds like you get an RPGesque level up.

The galactic phase sounds awesome, especially since Wright and company have taken cues from popular sci fi films. There's terraforming a la Star Trek II and even the ability to generate an intelligence-giving monolith like the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey. There's even talk of a planet destroying Superlaser, giving Star Wars nerds the opportunity to live out their fantasies of being an intolerant Imperial governor. CPI, n00bs, CPI.

I suppose it is more like playing an intelligent designer than natural selection, and could hardly be called an educational tool, but it sure looks like fun. There's even online features of the game, what Wright calls "massively single-player" (as opposed to massively multiplayer online, or MMO), with what seems like an automatic peer sharing (P2P) and review of player creations (buildings, technology, etc.).

This demonstration goes into a bit more depth than the trailer above: