TUAW Hands-on: Spore Origins for the iPhone

In the Electronic Arts booth here at E3, nestled in among the raucous noises of various first-person shooters, is a completely white room with a few cell phones on tables. This is the EA Mobile space, and it was here that we got to play Spore Origins, the iPhone version of Will Wright's sure-to-be masterpiece.

Like the EA Mobile space, Spore Origins is pretty simple and clean, and stands out as a fairly calm experience among the racket of a lot of other iPhone games. Spore takes you through a civilization from ameoba to space travel, but Spore Origins sticks with just the ameoba stage. You play a creature of your own creation and float through the microbial ether, eating things that are smaller than you, and running away from things that are larger.

Read on for TUAW's impressions of one of the most anticipated iPhone games, and why it might not be all we had hoped.

The game is motion controlled, and gameplay is pretty simple -- tilt to go, and your little guy always just keeps swimming along. After he chows down for a bit (you can line up combos in succession for a slightly higher score), you can level up, and with each level comes a certain amount of customization. The first ding gives you the option to color your character as you'd like (one cool feature: you can choose to colorize your creature with a camera shot from the iPhone's camera), and others let you upgrade all kinds of biological additions: body shape, pincers, tails, eyes, antennae, and anything else you'd find on whatever was crawling around in the dirt way back when.

Some of the additions are cosmetic -- they don't do much for you in terms of gameplay. But some actually do help -- if you load up on antennae, you can up your perception, and see where food is when it's off the screen. Likewise, later in the game you'll encounter creatures that need a little more tact when trying to eat them -- they might have a hard shell you'll have to remove with pincers, or other protection that you'll need upgrades to get around.

There are about 35 levels (the EA rep said each takes around 3-5 minutes to "beat"), and every five levels, you're presented with a cavern to explore, like a maze to wander through. But we were fairly bored playing the game -- while the accelerometer is a good time, your character doesn't actually mean anything. There's zero connection between this game and the full version of Spore -- you can't bring your characters out into the Spore world, or see any other characters from other players wandering the iPhone game. It's completely standalone, and that makes it feel a little unconnected -- who cares about this little creature you control when all he'll ever be is a speck in a Petri dish?

Multiplayer was also rumored at one point, but it's not found here on the iPhone. The version of the game we played was actually an alpha, we were told, and the game is currently in beta at EA, so there's still a chance the WiFi multiplayer could be added (originally, players were supposed to be able to pit powered-up microbes against each other), but the PR person we spoke with seemed skeptical.

Spore Origins will come out in the iPhone's App Store on September 7th, the same day as the full game arrives for Mac and PC. As a replicate of the cellular stage in Spore, it's actually pretty good -- you can make some wacky wandering creatures, and the game looks good. But the actual gameplay leaves something to be desired, and considering the fact that EA has chosen not to give this one any hooks into any other parts of the Spore franchise, we sincerely doubt it will live up to expectations when released.

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In the Electronic Arts booth here at E3, nestled in among the raucous noises of various first-person shooters, is a completely white room...

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FoundInTheFlood

anyone knows how to get those extra evolve points or what theyre called in english? In many levels that i finish i get 0 of 2 or 1 of 4 points, but you cant it more stuff cause if the bar is filled up you advance...so how do you get more points?

September 11 2008 at 12:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

orlok

Well the anticipation was high, but after playing both the Pc version and the iPod vers. I'm left a bit cold.

Of version is broad in scope and shallow in gameplay.

It does however ooze charm from every (s)pore.

It's real saving grace is the multi user aspect of having others creations in ones game, and vica versa.

Unfortunatly the I version has no online capability, and while still charming, lacks the pull of the PC version.

A great idea, was spore, but it just misses the mark.

Fun but ultimately dissapointing, IMHO.

I think though that the quality of the I game should hopefully raise the bar for iPhone and touch games, as in the main, production values have been amazingly low (apart from a select few).

There's my two pence worth, for good or I'll.

Please excuse spelling/punctuation but I'm doing this on my iPod touch .

Rgds

Lok

September 08 2008 at 9:24 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Drek

I might be tempted to pick up Spore for the iPhone if I could even get it for my Mac. I put in an order for a download of it at around 1am the day of release and I'm STILL waiting for my download link & activation code from GameTree. There's even a notice that if you bought it before 10am on release day you should get the email within an hour or two. Not that they've bothered responding to my email mentioning this.

I mean, I know it's a fairly new site and all but really, I could have easily picked it up from the store by now. Not a great first impression.

September 08 2008 at 2:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

arcticwind

It's in the store now. Search for Electronic Arts (that's the only way to find it, it seems) - $9.99

September 08 2008 at 1:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Sporeticus

I still think this is a smart move by EA. A good way to get more people interested in the game.

Does anybody know how much the iPhone Spore will cost? I haven't seen this anywhere.

-Sporeticus
Sporedup.com

July 19 2008 at 5:54 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Adrian

With it being exclusive to AT&T customers,does this mean the people who have an iPod Touch & bought the 2.0 iPhone F/W will be getting this game on the 7th or will we have to wait until September?I just read about it on kotaku.com if anyone is interested....

July 18 2008 at 8:38 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

heytpn

That stinks, I thought you could go from the deep sea to space, not just the origins part! Anyway, can somebody please tell me how to replace my person with a question mark avatar with another picture? Thanks.

July 18 2008 at 7:57 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

setec

I am disappointed. I was hoping that they sync up the limited iPhone game version to your full game version character. Even if you could only do minor leveling up of your character on a 45 minute bus ride home from work, it would be worth it. And frankly, I think it would make the Mac/PC version of the game more valuable. I am guessing we all will be paying a monthly fee, like WoW, to play Spore, so getting the addiction up will overshadow the money.

EA - Sync iPhone Spore to the full game and you will feed our addictions!

July 18 2008 at 5:22 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

PSM

Spore has been my most anticipated PC game release for at least 5 years, but I had little interest in the iPhone game only because I know I'm going to get the full version. If the iPhone one came out first I would have to buy it to satisfy my curiosity until I could play the game for real, but if they're both coming out on the same day I don't see why I would bother buying what amounts to a mini-game on my phone, when I will no doubt be staying up till the wee hours of the morning building full civilizations on my PC, and on top of that there's no relationship between the two.

July 18 2008 at 1:54 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

yuusharo

Well that's disappointing. I was under the assumption that the full game would be available on the iPhone, or at least a way to hook in between the mobile and desktop versions. If all we're getting is a stand alone tech-demo that can't really do much, I'm not interested.

What they should have done is put the *full* game on it, and have a way to sync spore creatures between your computer and iPhone, so you can play both versions with the same creature. Now that would be a killer app.

July 18 2008 at 1:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to yuusharo's comment

Brian Burns

It took what -- over 2 years to finally finish this game?
You really thought they would have been able to do a port to the iPhone in such a short time?

September 08 2008 at 3:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply