Spore Creature Creator

© 2008 Electronic Arts, Inc.
$9.99, Windows, Mac OSX, Nintendo DS
Teaches: creativity, ecosystems
CTR Rating: 94%
Editor's Choice

CTR Review

Want to make a really cool looking animal/monster? Spore Creature Creator is like a Whitman sampler for the upcoming game, Spore. But it is hard to download, and is sure to test the limits of your Mac or Windows graphics card. Once you get the 300MB file downloaded and installed (it took us three tries on either platform), the game lets you mix and match arms, legs, feet and eyes to create your own customized creature. The level of detail is striking, and the creatures' movements are amazingly realistic. In fact, parents and teachers should note that it is possible to create creatures with breasts and/or genitals, which is the price of an open-ended creativity system. You can see samples of such work on YouTube. In addition, read the technical requirements carefully. We were never able to get the game running correctly on Windows Vista, and had to upgrade our Macintosh to System 10.5.3 before it would work. If you don't have 10.5, don't bother. You start with blobs of body parts, which snap together automatically, and can be stretched or easily repositioned -- like virtual silly putty. Once you start mixing and matching the eyes, claws, noses, fins and so on, you realize just how different Spore is. The innovative drag and drop interface makes it fun and easy to experiment with a wide range of parts. Once your creature is assembled, you can try it out to see what it can do, with entertaining animations. If you like your critter, you can upload it to the site. The full version of Creature Creator costs $10. The free-trial version that we tested contains "25% of the creature-making parts from Spore." Creatures made in the Spore Creature Creator can also be imported into the full Spore game, allowing players to populate their own galaxies when the game ships worldwide later this year. Players can also share their creations with others by uploading to the Sporepedia at www.Spore.com. The Sporepedia is an online destination where people worldwide can search for and share Spore creations and comment on other player’s designs. The Spore Creature Creator is rated E, although the game itself has an E10+ rating. The downloadable demo version is free. The complete version costs $10.