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[starsrift]

The game needed depth, but continuing micro-scale simulation when you went macro is not the way to do it. That would just make it tedious for any but the most dedicated.

The stages between the cellular and space stages were a waste of the dev's time, sadly. They were placeholders, for "something cool could have happened here. Instead, you jump through hoops to get to the meat of the game". And that's a tale of budgets and scope that's been told before as to why it never happened.

Something that could've been really cool with Spore is panspermia. Or, divergent parallel evolution (like in Star Trek, Romulans split from Vulcans, and then later, Remans split from Romulans).

But the game just really needed depth. Systems and story.

[gimymblert]

That's why stopping at one phase is cool and great if that phase is feature rich enough and seamless, just ignore the "man made" skill evolution (no craft! no building!) you can still go into civilization like stuff (rhizome, insect like colony, etc ...)

[oahda]

The Sims kinda has the same problem btw.

I loved designing characters and building their houses, but I never actually played the game itself after that. That was just boring.

Plus the music was so good in the build modes so why would I ever want to exit them anyway

[s0]

the sims is a cool game

[DanglinBob]

My problem with spore (this was probably brought up but I just want to complain because I feel just as the OP did that it was not the game I had hoped) was that both PLACEMENT and the actual mutations you place on the creature had no impact!

I want a horn on my ass so I can kill things by running backwards! Maybe that's not optimal but I wanted to have limited resources that I could spend crafting the perfect killing/survival machine in a world that was evolving with and against me. To me that was where the fun was, and sadly, spore (and no other game that I know of) has even come close.

[s0]

theres a boardgame called dominant species that is supposed to be really good (but ive never played it)

[DanglinBob]

Dominant Species is a good game but the fact that you're a lizardy thing trying to become the best lizardy thing is about as far as it takes this Spore concept. It's really just a resource and land area management game, nothing more. A good one, but only fits this topic thematically

I recommend playing it though none-the-less!

[gimymblert]

My problem with spore (this was probably brought up but I just want to complain because I feel just as the OP did that it was not the game I had hoped) was that both PLACEMENT and the actual mutations you place on the creature had no impact!

I want a horn on my ass so I can kill things by running backwards! Maybe that's not optimal but I wanted to have limited resources that I could spend crafting the perfect killing/survival machine in a world that was evolving with and against me. To me that was where the fun was, and sadly, spore (and no other game that I know of) has even come close.

Aren't teh whole build your physics vehicule genre exactly that anyway?

[mks]

Perhaps SimLife is what you're looking for?

SimLife: The Genetic Playground was a relatively successful attempt by Maxis to produce an ecosystem simulator, allowing the player to design their own planetary ecosystem based on basic laws of physics which they could control in regards to a planetary climate, such as radiation, gravity, heat, light, and so forth.

The object of the game was to successfully produce a stable Earth-like planetary ecosystem and populate it with plants and animals either provided by the game or created by the players themselves, a task which required great patience and a meticulous nature, as the animals could be tweaked in dozens of ways using slider controls, and would easily perish if conditions for their survival weren't perfect.

Source

[MachinesOfN]

I've done a lot of thought on this as well (my in-progress second game is actually almost a re-imagining of Spore's space stage).

I liked the idea behind the progression they did have. As your creatures became more social, transitioning from the relatively uninteresting isolated individual to the united civilization made a lot of sense. More depth in the creature/tribal/civilization stages would have been nice, but it makes sense that they cut them down to what they were (given that they were essentially developing four games on top of their really innovative creature creators). My biggest problem with it was actually that the space stage should have contained the climax (the final battle with the Grox), but they made it the resolution, with the real climax of the game being the launching of your shuttle and escape from your homeworld.

Spore's progression was all about evolution. First of the individuals, and gradually of the species. Given that, it makes no sense that the game's final transition was moving you from running a world government down to being a single ship captain and errand boy. To me, that was the games's real unforgivable sin. You went from commanding an army to shooting sick cows in the span of about ten minutes.

Instead, the game should have taken that control over your civilization and expanded it. Give the player control of fleets of ships, remove the idiotic "eco-collapse" and trading minigames, and set them up for a climactic war against the Grox. My ideal space stage (and the project I'm working on now) is be a Eufloria-style strategy game with Civilization-style diplomacy and Civilization-stage-style "toys" on a galactic scale. That would have maintained the progression from cell to Kardashev-3 Civilization, and research options could have created that continued sense of evolution (especially with branching research trees reflecting the rule of three progressions per stage).

[FrankieSmileShow]

Well spore was so many different things at once, theres a lot of different directions it could go. Im not sure how I would "improve" it, as in make it stick to its actual goal but improve its execution.

The issue is, the evolution of the game in scale is so wide, that there isnt really a way to make its gameplay consistent. Separating it in phases really seemed like the best way to handle this... and it didnt turn out really fun. I think the goal was wrong. Going from blob to individual to tribe to civilisation to spaceship, it just cant work as a whole, these are fundamentally different types of gameplay.
This reminds me a bit of Dwarf Fortress, how its currently split into two game types, adventure mode and fortress mode. I am pretty sure that the goal was (or might still be) to have both of these modes eventually merged into one, right? I dont think that can really be done! The differences are pretty fundamental. They will always feel like two different games downloaded together as a pack or something. Thematically tied maybe, but the experience is completely different.

If I was to be handed the Spore IP somehow, id say, we got to pick one thing to focus on, and build the rest of the game in service of that thing. Dont try to make each separate phase work as its own separate game. Pick one phase as being the main one, and build all the other ones to be an elaborate setup to the main one.

Either this is a civilisation game (where you control your civilisation from its VERRRY humble beginnings, and your early evolution has significant impacts on how the city building part works later)

Or its some sort of survival adventure game, where you control one individual of a species, slowly evolving as if it were a RPG, like EVO on the snes, but open world or something. Explore this savage planet as a weird alien that inexplicably keeps growing more eyeballs. Maybe theres a weird plot, like you need to save the world from some evil space-age alien civilisation that's destroying it or something, or maybe theres several possible plots you can stumble upon. Thats probably the one I'd go with, Im not that big a fan of CIV games.

[s0]

If I was to be handed the Spore IP somehow, id say, we got to pick one thing to focus on, and build the rest of the game in service of that thing. Dont try to make each separate phase work as its own separate game. Pick one phase as being the main one, and build all the other ones to be an elaborate setup to the main one.

isn't that what the space phase was? or at least thats how it felt to me playing the game. the space phase is more complex than the other phases and brings back some old mechanics (iirc there was some way to "beam down" onto planets and walk around on them that controls like the creature phase for instance).

what could be done to improve the phases is to tie them together in more meaningful ways. in the end the stuff that carries over between them is trivial. you get to pick 1 of 3 paths (that are all more or less the same) and get to decide how your creatures and buildings look. none of this justifies actually playing all the phases leading up to the space phase.

it's not like there isnt any precedent for this either. there are multi-genre games like sid meier's pirates, deus ex or even GTA (kinda) that manage to tie different types gameplay together really well.

the game actually had 2 of the most interesting phases (the aquatic phase and the city phase) cut out and was apparently supposed to have a lot more branching than just the carnivore/herbivore/omnivore paths. the entire game is an example of streamlining done wrong basically.

http://spore.wikia.com/wiki/City_Stage
http://spore.wikia.com/wiki/Aquatic_Stage

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anyway like i said i would try to get rid of the phases completely. it wouldn't be easy but i don't think it's impossible. i can't think of any game that really "interpolates" between different gameplay styles rather than switching between them and itd be interesting trying to design sth like that.

[gimymblert]