Let's Play: Spore!

[Miss Mae]

Introduction

Spore (2008) is a game I recently bought on Steam. If you don't know anything about the game, basically it involves you becoming the human embodiment of evolution as you help a cell achieve sentience. I thought I should write a Let's Play following the evolution of a cell. I created a little herbivore cell to start our journey.

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Look at my little beady eyes...

Our as yet unnamed cell will become one of the first signs of life on the planet 'Sunaru'.

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A prize goes to whoever figures out Mae's boring naming scheme.

So, after a few menu-clicks, the meteor carrying our cell crashes into Sunaru and our unnamed cell is born!

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This doesn't look like Kansas...

And our adventure begins!

---

Chapter links:

> Chapter One
> Chapter Two
> Chapter Three

[Miss Mae]

Our cell shakes off the flying chunks of meteor rock and swims out into the pools of muck that currently categorise Sunaru.

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From the day we arrive on the planet...

The helpful game dialogue tells us that our little fella is a herbivore, so it must eat little pieces of plant to survive. Thankfully there are plenty of these floating around in the muck with us, and soon we complete our goal of eating five plant pieces.

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Woah, dude, chlorofil, duuuude.

He swims around awhile, eating more plant pieces and encountering other strange lifeforms, such as pink worm-like creatures with six eyes along their backs. Some were significantly larger than our little fella, and he has to swim away quickly to avoid being eaten.

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Look at his big, pointy teeth. Eek!

One of the perks of encountering these larger creatures, as the game tells us, is that they can give us new parts for our little fella as his species evolves. In the aftermath of the short fight between these two lifeforms, a part was released, so our creature swam over and collected the new part. In order to see what it does, we need to find another of our kind to breed with. We let out a mating call, and soon another lifeform responds.

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Hey, honey. Wanna breed?

The next screen that appears allows us to edit our creature's offspring so that we are improving through evolution.

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Not very attractive, am I...

The first thing I remember is that terrifying black creature with his pointy teeth. I'm excited to realise we have that part available and the DNA to purchase it. Hooray! Time to graduate from herbivore school and become an omnivore!

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I may have more teeth, but I'm still pretty unattractive...

I notice that there's an option to paint our creature, so I figure maybe that will help our baby look a little less... vomit yellow. I even have the option of naming our creature in this menu, so I promptly do.

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Moderately better.

And so Aether is born.

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Now I can eat anything.

And she is ready to take on the world with her big pointy teeth.

[Shauna]

Nothin' will be messing with your little creature now! Not with those pincers...

[Psychotic]

I hope you don't encounter that angry black beast!

[Miss Mae]

Aether swims around looking for more to eat. In the process she locates one of those famous meteor shards that the game was telling us about. As she tries to swim towards it, she encounters another creature who doesn't look particularly friendly. Regardless, she attempts to snag that meteor shard because she is a fearless being.

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Nothing to see here...

She successfully snags a new part! She's eaten quite a bit of food since she was born and it's provided her with a decent amount of DNA, so she decides to find a mate and continue the evolution process. However, before she can make her mating call, she catches the attention of another creature who, though smaller than the last, is very hungry.

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Please don't eat me. Please don't eat me.

Eventually she manages to escape the scary spikey being - but it was close! Those spikes made me think - our little creature needs some defences. Aether finally has a chance to make her mating call and I investigate spikes in the creature menu. Success - there they are!

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I'mma spike you.

It might not be much, but we didn't have the DNA to add any more. Still, at least our creature has some more defences now! I also gave our creature some new fins to make them a little faster in case more beasties start chasing us while we're just innocently trying to eat. Some new colours and a new name for the next creature in this evolutionary chain, and we'll be done!

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I can't wait for everyone to see my pretty blue skin.

Almost immediately upon being born, Bethany steals the attention of a scary, black, multi-eyed, multi-spiked creature. At least he's not as big as the first one we saw. Still - RUN!

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Or, alternatively - SWIM!

This creature chases Bethany for ages. She eats as much as she can while she tries to escape until eventually she grows larger. The now-much-smaller black creature loses interest and disappears. Really, eating is Bethany's favourite thing to do and it's understandable considering it just saved her life.

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Oh, man. Food. Get in me.

Bethany continues eating pieces of plants and the occasional smaller creature until the little green bar at the bottom of the screen is full. You know what that means? Bethany has acquired enough DNA to start developing sentience!

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My little brain is now slightly less little!

This means the Bethany is going to have babies - in 3d.

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Look at all those dimensions~.

It also means Bethany is going to have babies that have legs. This is an exciting development indeed. I add a pair of average-looking legs, granting our creature the ability to walk.

I fiddle around with the different options, removing things like our creature's little tail and fins that won't be necessary once we are a land creature. I stretch our creature's spine, changing its body shape and giving it a nice, thick tail to replace its old one. I move its spikes to its tail and also add a part that allows it to spit poison, which should come in handy against the new predators we will inevitably be facing. A new colour and a new name, and our creature's makeover is complete.

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I look nothing like my mother.

And with that, Cody is born. He leaves the muck and makes his way onto the land where he finds a nest of creatures of the same species.

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'Sup homies.

Thought mildly nervous, Cody is excited to see what awaits him on the surface.

[Jinx]

I love this game!

Also, with the risk of sounding critical, the tail kind of looks like a penis at the tip. xD

[Formalhaut]

Never played this game but it looks kind of cute!

[Miss Mae]

Cody is confused. It's bright out here, and it's awfully drier than he remembers. But he no longer has to survive alone - it's nice to have some buddies. He's excited to get moving, but then he realises he's stuck.

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What are legs? How do you work these things?

Eventually the game glitches out and throws Cody around the map a little. When he finally stationary again, he decides to explore his surroundings. He finds the carcass of a creature and decides to nibble on its remains. Apparently this really appeals to the ladies.

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Can I help you?

I also find some sparkly bones. Turns out these bones contain new parts.

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Yay! Treasure!

The game then encourages us to explore outside the realms of our own nest, so Cody goes for a walk. He finds a species called the Nookie. They regard him with confusion, and he is given the option of being nice in the hope of gaining allies or of stomping their species into the ground for no reason.

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Greetings, Nookie.

Cody is feeling a little angsty after appearing on the surface for the first time, so he decides to take that out on these lesser beings by destroying them. The game rewards us for being pricks.

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Committing genocide makes us smarter? Excellent.

After a long hard day destroying an entire species, Cody decides to return to the nest.

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Hey guys - I'm home!

Apparently being a hardcore fighter guy gets all the ladies excited because immediately another of our species wants to mate with Cody. They do a little mating dance and everything. It's all very cute.

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And 5, 6, 7, 8!

We enter editor mode and start working on Cody's offspring. The primary change we make is giving Cody's offspring arms. Arms are very useful, so I figure it makes sense that evolution provides them as soon as possible. Cody's son's name is Denver.

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Hello! I'm ready to pummel nests with my fancy new arms.

When Denver is born the entire nest celebrates, waving their new arms around and dancing. Denver is taught how to charge, which will definitely help him destroy other species more effectively.

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So I just run at them until they die? Charging sounds cool!

Denver decides the best thing for it is to go out and test his new skills. While exploring he quickly finds a new species called Grooby. You may think my tail looks like a penis, Jinx, but a least it's not my head. Denver decides to attack the penis-headed Grooby.

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Bam! Smack! Crash!

And they are destroyed.

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Take that! Mwahahaha!

After annihilating the Grooby and collecting the sparkly bone treasures from around their nest, Denver moves on to the next species - the Batzu.

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Hello.

And destroys them too.

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Goodbye.

Mass genocide is tiring, so after bringing the Batzu to extinction, Denver decides it's time to head back to the nest.

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Man, I'm never going to get all of this blood out of my fur.

And waiting for him is a pretty lady, all hot and flustered from the bloodshed.

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Heyyyyyy.

We collected some pretty excellent treasures during our exploration, so these babies should be pretty exciting. Find out what remarkable offspring Denver and his new mate have in the next instalment of Let's Play: Spore!

[Psychotic]

You're a monster

[Miss Mae]

Jiro has mentioned this to me, yes.

[Night Fury]

Sunaru is Uranus spelled backwards.


(trust me to get it.)

[Miss Mae]

Sunaru is Uranus spelled backwards.


(trust me to get it.)

This is why I love you.