Full FeedSpore spawns on Facebook
Not content with just one “weedy species” franchise in the form of The Sims, Electronic Arts now wants to take over your gaming garden with Spore. EA studio Maxis announced last week the open beta for Spore Islands on Facebook. Spore Islands invites Facebook users to experience the Spore universe in a new way by competing against each other in the “ultimate survival of the fittest game.”
Designed by Maxis and Wil Wright, Spore is a multi-genre single-player metaverse god game available for Windows and Macintosh, with variations available on the iPhone, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii and others. The Spore Islands version—set in a vibrant, playful 2D world—will follow the format of most Facebook games, in that it focuses on player-to-player interaction:
... users choose their own island to live on, create creatures and evolve them, invite friends to live on their island, and send their own creatures to friends’ islands, all in a quest to dominate as many islands as possible. In Spore Islands, much like in other Spore games, parts matter. Throughout the game, players can earn and purchase DNA points that they can use to modify their creature’s stats or customize their creature’s appearance with fun accessories such as hats, animations, holiday-themed items, and more. Players’ progress is tracked on both Global and a Friends-only leaderboards, which can be viewed by players and their friends, upping the ante in the race to the top of the food chain.
Caryl Shaw, senior producer of Spore Islands, doesn’t see this as another Farmville, however. “What sets Spore Islands apart from other social games is that it offers a different kind of social interactivity where a player’s gameplay experience is directly affected by the choices and decisions their friends make. It’s an ongoing game, so player’s creatures and islands will be active at all times, whether the player is logged into Facebook or not.”
So, I guess you won’t have to annoy your husband by taking over the computer to find the owner of a pink cow and water your eggplants every night when he needs to be doing his Appletell work, Tieraney.
To learn more about the Spore franchise, visit www.spore.com. Spore Islands can be played at Facebook.
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If you have a buck to spend and have an iPhone/iPod Touch, Apple has just approved NaviSPORE (http://www.navispore.com), the only iPhone app that lets you see your Creations in 3D. As described in the link, NaviSPORE is community-driven: if you want to see your Creation, send the COLLADA file and associated textures as a zip file (you make these files with the Spore COLLADA cheat) to us via .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and give it a name, one that hasn’t already been taken in our model bank.
on November 13, 2009 at 12:57 PM - LINK