Spore: Create An Alien

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Continuing on...The gameplay at this point is like a third person adventure game where you control a single alien member of your species (others like you will be at a communal nest - which is also a place for you to mate and create the next generation and evolutionary step of your alien species). In this stage you will encounter many other species that have evolved and you can choose to either befriend them or make them extinct. Sometimes, however, that choice will be automatically made for you as some creatures are naturally aggressive and making friends with them is virtually impossible.

As you make friends with other species, you can get them to join you as members of your pack. Your ability to lead a pack and its size will be determined by your creature's evolutionary growth. The best thing to do here is to stick with the game's suggested objectives. While it is tempting to explore around, running into much stronger and aggressive species is always possible, so just focus on doing what the game dictates.

To handle other species in this create an alien type game, you can choose to make friends by socializing or make enemies by attacking. To socialize, players have to add parts that add to charm, pose, dance and sing abilities. As you would expect, the singing stat is determined by the mouth, dance is feet, pose is hands and charm is determined by unique parts.

Slight stat modifiers can be found on other parts, but only the highest stat is counted. So you can prominently display a low stat part for aesthetic purposes when creating your alien, while cleverly hiding a discreetly placed high-stat part. A similar system determines your fighting capabilities. With four main attacks: bite (mouth), charge (spikes), strike (paws) and spit (poison or spike sacs), players have a range of different attacks to kill other creatures.

Every now and then, massive epic alien creatures can be seen. These towering giants are best avoided, and should not be hunted unless you are ready to face a creature with super tough armor, 1000 HP, and a very long fight. If you choose to go for this creature and the Epic Killer Achievement, make sure that you have plenty of room to run and maneuver.

Fortunately, Epic Creatures do not have projectile attacks so having an entire squad of long range spitters will help. Also, these giants tend to get stuck behind trees and rocks -this is the best time to try and beat them. Just remember that your creature will go hungry at some point and you will have to run away, feed, and hunt this creature again before it recovers from the damage you have previously dealt.

Eventually, you will earn enough DNA points to progress to the next stage. As we mentioned, be sure to call a mate and spawn your last generation before moving on. This allows you to edit your creature's body parts one last time.

Meet the Neighbors

The Tribal Stage is the first massive gameplay change that the game takes. Instead of just controlling one single unit, players find themselves in charge of an entire tribe of alien monsters. This means finding food supplies, increasing the population, domesticating animals and of course, interacting with other tribes.

The editor phase is still present at the start, and is accessible at any time from the main hut. Now, instead of being able to modify your creature's body parts, you get to determine the type of clothes that they will put on. "Clothes" is a rough term to describe the new parts you can add on, "accessories" seem to be a more function-and-look appropriate term. The parts list is loaded up with a variety of face masks, hats, paddings (or armor), and various little knick-nacks you can stick on your tribal members. As with the previous stage, various stats are attributed to the items. Though it is not necessary to bump all the numbers up to maximum, a rating of three or above in an often used stat would be recommended.

The big focus of this stage is getting in touch with the other alien species that have evolved to the tribal stage as well. The other species that are still in the creature phase can be used as a source for meat for omnivores and carnivores or they can be domesticated (at the cost of 15 food points). Herbivores will still benefit from this as the extra food points may be used as gifts to other tribal species. Speaking of the other tribal species, getting to know them is one thing. Deciding what to do with them is another. Each tribe, like yours, has its own village. Players can choose to either wipe out another tribe or make friends with them.

When making friends, it is important for players to bring musical instruments. Much like the socialization phase of the alien creature creation stage, making friends is a matter of copying what the other party is doing. Instead of poses and dances, players now have to play instruments that match the type used by the other village. Unlike the creature phase, your own stat in socialization is not as significant here as the progress bar, which is single-directional and seems to increase at a set rate. Also, it does not matter if you choose to interact with a tribe leader or with a regular member. Successfully making friends with another tribe will unlock new clothing and village options for your species. Allies will also occasionally bring you gifts of food - you will have to manually pick up the basket, just keep an eye out for the in-game notification that a gift is being given.

If being friends with a neighboring tribe does not suit your taste, or if they are naturally aggressive (there are some tribes that will try to steal your food supplies or attack your village), then it is time to put down those didgeridoos and time to pick some axes, hammers and spears, kill them all!

To destroy an enemy village, you only need to bring down the main enemy hut. Even if other units or structures are still present, that species will instantly be defeated and become extinct. Our favorite strategy here would be to wait for the other tribe to try and attack you as defending your village is always easier.

This is because all your units will benefit from the health regeneration bonus by being inside the village. Also, be sure to make use of the different attack tools that you have. Once you have wiped out the enemy units, you can rally all your forces and attack the now-less populated enemy village. Most likely, the only opposition that will face you is a chieftain and a couple of lackeys - nothing that a fully armed tribe cannot take out. Once their defenders are dead, you can concentrate on taking down the hut.

Just be sure to kill any new enemy spawns that might pop out. If you have allied tribes, be sure to note their location and proximity to enemy tribes. You might have to defend them or the gift bearing units they send to you.

As you successfully make allies and defeat your enemies, your totem pole will gradually rise. Once it reaches six levels, you will have risen to being the most successful species on the planet and will be the only ones to move on to building a civilization.

Taking On the World

Your species may have proven to be the fastest evolving race in the planet and you may create an alien that is powerful and intelligent, but it is not immune to one of the issues that plagued our human civilization: cultural separation. Despite the fact that your entire race stems from a single tribe, the step from tribal to civilized shows that somewhere along the way, lines get drawn and everyone is no longer on the same page. You start out in control of a single city - the one that emerged from your very first village and your goal is to take control of other cities all over the world: all of them.

Just as with the previous stages, players start out the new phase with the creation mode. This time, you will be doing more than just editing your creature. Speaking of which, outfitting is now expanded to include more items than what was available in the tribal stage. Medieval looking armor bits and some oddly placed bowties add a sense of educated style to your creatures - though being able to dress them up in full garments is still not possible.

The real focus of creation here are the structures and vehicles. As a city, you will have four main facilities: your city hall, homes for creatures, a place for entertainment and a factory for your industry. Spore presents players with a well made structure editing system that works just like the creature editor. The existing parts will allow you to create buildings in specific styles (castles, country, high-tech and others). When constructing, focus on the aesthetic aspects instead of functional. None of the parts have any specific bonuses so this is all mostly just for visual effect -you can have a plain looking cube for a house and your native residents will not mind.

Your vehicles on the other hand, have to be designed with a bit of functionality. Now, it does not matter if your land vehicle has hover-parts, or your sea-ships have wings. Creating multi-terrain vehicles is not an option in this game. If it is meant for land, it will never go beyond the shore. Your vehicles are responsible for two basic things: securing spice-geysers (which is your only source of income) and serving as your army. There is no definite limit to the size of an army you can have aside from the current number of available houses in your cities. The more houses you have, the larger an army you can make.

Creating your vehicles is a combination of function (movement parts determine speed, cockpits for health and weapons for offensive abilities), and style. No matter what color or shape your vehicles are in, they will work according to the stats they have. Even if you were designing an unbelievably bulky lump of non-aerodynamic mass for a plane, if you equip it with level 5 movement parts, it will still fly through the skies like a jet.

The first thing players will notice once they move out of the editing phase is that they are actually fighting against cities of their own race. Indeed, this stage of the game is more about uniting your species under a common rule as opposed to interacting with new races. Any other race on the planet has been left as un-evolved wildlife (which you will no longer be interacting with until the next stage).

Much like the tribal phase, players have the option of befriending or conquering other cities. Conquering is a simple matter of selecting your entire army, right clicking on an enemy city and selecting the capture option. Easily done with large masses of units, though players have to always remember that sea-based vehicles have stronger firepower than land based ones (so be sure to always send ships whenever possible). Air based units are good for fighting off other aliens, but are not useful when it comes to attacking cities.

Making friends on the other hand, is a not as easy as you would think. Gone is the old meet and greet aspect of the previous stage. Players are now introduced to a communications button that allows you to speak with the heads of the other cities. In order to make friends, you must establish communication, trade and every once in a while, send gifts. Eventually, the other nation will allow you to open alliance talks with them. Sadly, making your own city grow is going to intimidate your neighbors. Be sure to send in a few bribes in order to counter-act the negative social points that you will undoubtedly get by progressing.

One aspect that players have to remember is that having a good economy is the key to fastest route to success in this stage. Regardless of the route you take, the amount of spice you produce helps determine how fast you can proceed as a species. In order to maximize your spice output, the layout of your city has to be streamlined. Unless you chose to play on hard difficulty, any city with high spice production ratios and at least one happiness ranking should be enough.

Here is a basic rundown of how a city should be set up. First, set a factory at a major intersection (preferably with at least three roads). One of the roads should lead to the city hall, and the other points place houses. This instantly gives you three lines worth of production, and two houses for a population bonus. Add an entertainment building (preferably one that will affect both a house and the city hall in order to create a happiness bonus that will offset the factory).

A strategy that many other players prefer to take is to make use of the super weapon that appears later in the Civilization stage after you control at least six cities. While useful (it wipes out everything else instantly), building up 48,000 credits will take time. You can invest half of that amount into a massive army and just blitz through every single city you have yet to take over, and this is also the best way to get the Rolling Thunder achievement.

One way or the other, your race will eventually be united under one banner - yours, and it will be time to make your first step towards the stars: by making your first space-faring ship.

Create Your Own Spore Monster Now

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