Spore's facts of life

Founding an interstellar culture is all well and good, but you've got to start out personal - something that these screens of Spore, Will Wright's PC everything-and-the-kitchen-sink sim, show off. It's like anature documentary... in space.

After hauling itself out of the primeval soup, your creature needs to find food and mates, with the latter achieved by giving off a mating call to attract any willing same-celled lifeforms. (There's no distinction between male and female creatures, which, given the endlessly wriggly variations you can come up with in the creature editor, might be a relief).

Hitting it off provides a herd for protection, as well as a new generation of misfits, and from there your tribe can found its first settlement, grow into a civilization and reach for the stars with oddly-shaped digits.

It's the history of life for people with short attention spans: expect it on PC - and possibly other formats, including DS - next year.

August 31, 2006