Electronic Arts has unleashed the Spore Creature Creator 2-D, a free Flash-based online application that lets gamers create, modify and share a whole new generation of dimensionally-challenged Spore creatures.
Coming in advance of the release of Spore Hero for the Wii and Spore Hero Arena for the Nintendo DS, the Spore Creature Creator 2-D lets players build their own beasts or import and modify them from the massive Sporepedia, which features over 120 million pieces of user-generated content. The Creature Creator 2-D offers more than 250 unique body parts like limbs, eyes, heads and accessories like antlers and wings, and once creatures are created, they can be played with in the Spore Creature Trainer game, embedded into Facebook pages or shared with others via email.
“Spore Creature Creator 2-D offers players a brand new way to express their creativity and share their creatures as it can be played by anyone with internet access,” said Senior Producer Caryl Shaw. “The clean art style and intuitive point-and-drag functionality makes it easy for creators of all ages to get in on the fun. It’ll be interesting to see how players use this new creative application.”
The “easy for all ages” bit sounded like a challenge so I decided to give the thing a try for myself. It certainly was simple; the interface will be familiar to anyone who’s seen the original Spore Creature Creator and I was on my way to building a hideously deformed abomination in no time at all. Saving and loading was a breeze and creatures can be sent to anyone as virtual greeting cards through the built-in email link.
The Creature Trainer game falls flat, though; after messing around with it for a bit, I found the most effective strategy was to simply fold my pink monster over backwards, grab its prominent ass-hammer and smack everything that came close. Effective, perhaps, but it looked horribly painful.
In fact, since the “real” game is so lame I think we need to come up with one of our own and I can’t think of anything better than a 2-D version of the contest we had last year, so get ready for The Spore Creature Creator 2-D Giant Penis Monster Creation Contest! This one will be even easier: Just make your monster at Spore2D.com, then send it off to [email protected]. Fame awaits!
