Spore is a real time strategy based simulation game set to be released on 5 September, 2008 in Europe. The North American version will release on 7 September, 2008. The game is being developed by Maxis and will be published by Electronic Arts on release. Spore will run Windows XP and Windows Vista platforms only. It is a single player game that can be played online too. You can download Spore free trial version from EA's website after it is released. EA will also be releasing Spore: Glalactic Edition that will feature ?The Making of Spore? DVD, ?How to make a Better Being? video by National Geographic Channel, ?The Art of Spore? mini-book and a handbook on Galactic for just $79.99.



Spore puts the player in the beginning of an evolution. It shows on how a unicellular species developed into a social and intelligent animal masters the whole planet and universe. This genre is a heart touching but not a single exact word can be defined for Spore. Developers say it to be God game, but other insisted that it is real time strategy game. Later on ?massive single player online game? that describes its broad gameplay. Earlier, Spore was to be named as a ?Sim everything? but Wright later in coined the term Spore to keep it out of the shadow of Sims series of games. Also the title seems to be attractive as well. BTW, it is one of the most anticipated games of mine.

The story of the Spore begins with a meteor hitting the planet splits up and here comes out tiny organisms. The story for the game is divided into phases. There are five phases in the Spore. From starting to end, these are Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization and Space phase. Outcomes of the first phase effects the initial conditions in the next phase. Every new phase is more complicated than its previous one. And every phase supports its own type of gameplay. There is no limitation on the amount of time a player can spent in each phase. One very good point in the story of Spore is that after all of the player's creatures are destroyed, player is sent back in the beginning of the evolution period.

Spore user's community will feature lot of user generated content. Players can directly upload there creatures videos to youtube and also most popular videos will be showcased on The Spore YouTube Channel. Also, best content will feature on official Spore site. Using Sporecast, player can track other player's progress through RSS feeds. Player can also download the Spore content to its computer. To let users enjoy the game, developers has insisted highly on user generated content. There are 18 different types of editors using which users can edit different types of content like music, videos etc and share them. No other site has yet insisted this much on their user power. Surely this will go to increase the popularity of Spore.

In order to prevent the illegal use of Spore, EA made use of SecuRAM, a modified Digital Rights Management Software. The game will be authenticated online after it is installed to the user's computer. Online authentication will ensure that no illegal copies of the game are in use. Certainly these kinds of steps are needed in now days when piracy is taking on the original. As the game will be releasing in September this year, I will let you when Spore is available for download. You can then download Spore free trial version from here. You just have to subscribe to games feeds to get alerted of the Spore download.