Make friends, battle enemies, and save the galaxy.
Spore Creatures is an Action RPG spin-off of Spore, released exclusively on the Nintendo DS. Created by Griptonite Games and published by Electronic Arts, Spore Creatures shifts the gameplay focus from evolution to story-telling and puzzle solving. With a distinctly colorful paper cutout aesthetic, the game was notable for including a faithful adaptation of Spore's Creature Creator, and an incredibly overzealous autocensor for the names of your creations. When not playing through the story, players can use whatever parts they find to create their own creatures and share them with friends both locally and over the now defunct Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service.When resident megalomaniac scientist Gar'Skuther infects the player's best friend Little Oogie with a mysterious disease, the player is sent on a wild chase throughout the Spore galaxy to confront Gar'Skuther for a cure. Throughout the game, the player evolves their creature to help the various wild denizens across the Spore galaxy on their quest, fixing their problems in exchange for useful body parts and star maps. Will the player successfully cross the galaxy to save their friend, befriending the populace, and teach the universe a thing or two about The Power of Friendship? Or will they leave a trail of bodies in their wake to prove that nobody can stand between them and the cure?
You'll probably end up doing both.
Spore Creatures was released in September of 2008 to a generally mixed reception. It would receive something of a spiritual successor in the form of Spore Hero roughly a year later, which dials up the story-based aspects of the game even further but is otherwise quite similar. Another Spore game would release on the DS alongside Spore Hero, that being Spore Hero Arena.
Not to be confused with the game released on Windows Phone and iOS in 2009 and 2010 respectively under the same name.
Spore Creatures contains examples of the following tropes:
- Ability Required to Proceed: At regular intervals the player will be stopped by a long stretch of hazardous ground that cannot be crossed until the player obtains a pair of legs, the earliest example being the third region of Tapti where the Bushley legs are required to cross a path of thorns.
- Achievement Mockery: There are various badges awarded for repeatedly doing incredibly stupid or illogical things, including fleeing combat, taking a lot of damage, making yourself sick, dying, and flubbing saving Flubit. However, these also award Badge Points, and are thus required if you want access to every Cheat and bonus part on the same save.
- Achievement System: The Badge system tracks numerous statistics about your playthrough which count toward achievements; every Badge earned gives you Badge Points, which can be put towards useful bonus parts from the Part Shop, or cheats in the Cheat Shop.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Creatures come in a variety of neon colors which can clash or pair with each other in as many ways as you can come up with. There are several unusual and completely unrealistic patterns to select from, too.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The Burrow ability unlocks early in the campaign and sends the player right back to the last friendly nest they used; pressing the button again sends the player back to where they initially burrowed. This can be used to immediately try on new parts, or put on a part required to solve a puzzle.
- Several cheats in the Cheat Shop provide abilities such as maximizing the Sight stat, giving the player massive attack strength, total invincibility, and auto-playing the dance minigame. These can be particularly helpful when going for certain Badges.
- If you die facing Gar'Skuther whether through combat or dancing, a Koth from the previous area will come in to assist you. Die again, and another will arrive.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can have no more than two creatures following you at any given time, and nests can only have a certain number of creatures before Sporelings for them stop spawning.
- Artistic License – Biology: In a very similar fashion to Spore, the game allows you to run wild with evolution and create entirely different creatures throughout the campaign with a single visit to a friendly nest.
- Artwork and Game Graphics Segregation: Numerous creatures on the cover do appear in-game, but use different color schemes and slightly different parts. This is most obvious with the Meepers; on the cover the creature is green with light green spots on its wings, but in-game the creature is bright red with solid yellow spots along its back and wings.
- Artificial Limbs: Gar'Skuther's suit uses artificial arms and legs, which can be unlocked in the Creature Creator and are among the best in the game.
- Barrier Warrior: The Shield Bio-Power bestows the user with complete invincibility as long as it lasts, nullifying any inbound attacks and Bio-Powers in the process. The user is free to continue attacking while Shield is active, and can even use other Bio-Powers.
- Bioweapon Beast: The Skuthers are Gar'Skuther's own creations, created to overrun the Spore galaxy as the final stage of his plan.
- Bizarre Alien Limbs: There are numerous legs and arms in the game that in no way resemble anything remotely earthlike, usually having several additional joints or not having proper feet. One particular example are the Bubleebu's arms and legs; each leg and arm has two separate joints ending in a fine point for a hand or foot.
- Bleak Level: Zencrie, the final planet in the story, has been ravaged by Gar'Skuther's plague with the remaining creatures fighting over increasingly scarce resources. The water is polluted, the land is rotten, and there's barely any vegetation making survival as an herbivore more difficult.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Be careful when challenging some Pollinated Creatures; as there's not a lot of restrictions on where they spawn, you might encounter one that has far more health, damage, and Bio-Powers than anything else in the area.
- Breath Weapon: The Flame Jet Bio-Power gives your creature the ability to breathe fire, dealing constant damage to a single target provided they stay in range.
- Cap: At Level 30, the Intelligence level cap, your Health and Energy cap out at 500 each. Your Body Points cap out at 325 note , and a creature can have no more than 11 total body parts. Finally, nests can only support anywhere from two to four creatures; if all those spots are filled, Sporelings for that nest won't spawn.
- Character Customization: Interacting with a friendly nest will send the player to the Creature Creator, where any parts that have been collected can be applied to your creature. The player's creature can also be painted in numerous ways. In fact, engaging with this system is regularly required to get past obstacles, gain new abilities, and generally build a better being.
- Character Level: Interacting with creatures and collecting Intelligence Tokens increases the player's Intelligence Level, which increases their maximum health, energy, and Body Point budget. The maximum Intelligence level is 30.
- Combat Exclusive Healing: The Heal Bio-Power cannot be used outside combat. This can especially be an issue when playing as a carnivore, as the only way to get meat is to off creatures or eat Sporelings.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Some creatures in the campaign will use Bio-Powers that their parts don't actually give them, most notably Gar'Skuther being able to use Leaf Flurry despite not having a suitable part.
- Inverted in the case of the Sweezels, who should have access to Level 4 Leaf Flurry note , but can't use it.
- Cosmic Deadline: Planets get drastically shorter as the game goes on: Tapti has five regions with sidequests in each one, Pangu has two regions, whereas the rest of the planets only have one region each and become increasingly linear.
- Covers Always Lie: Various creatures on the cover of the game don't appear anywhere in the campaign, and a few of them can't even be created due to the parts for them just not being in the game.
- Creating Life Is Bad: The Fyrisaba, one of Gar'Skuther's creations, are incredibly aggressive hybrid monsters designed to upset the balance of life on Pangu. The Skuthers, Gar'Skuther's ultimate creation, are the most powerful form of organic life in the galaxy, and are designed to purge entire planets.
- Cruelty Is the Only Option: The only way to gain certain achievements is to engage in immoral and awful behavior, such as eating a lot of Sporelings, picking fights with friendly creatures, and killing one of every creature in the game - including the defenseless Oogie.
- Cute Little Fangs: Some mouths have this as part of their design, the goofy looking Arclart especially.
- Dance-Off: One of the two ways to defeat Gar'Skuther, though be warned he has some absolutely killer moves.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: The worst thing to happen when you die is being sent back to a friendly nest with three quarters of your Energy and Health restored; your allies will be sent back with you provided they haven't died.
- Declaration of Protection: One of the very first things your player character says is one of these to Little Oogie. Them looking to live up to this drives the game's main conflict.Player: "Me and you, we've got to look out for one another in this crazy world, OK? A Protection Pact."
- Denser and Wackier: Aside from the wealth of silly cheats and generally more cartoony presentation, Spore Creatures gives your creature access to supernatural Bio-Powers and stars creatures with much higher levels of intelligence than Spore.
- Difficulty by Acceleration: The Dance minigame becomes harder and harder throughout the campaign with faster songs that have greater densities of notes; having a high Social stat helps to compensate for this, but not by much.
- Eats Babies: Sporelings are perfectly edible, and the game will almost never stop you from eating one.
- Faux Affably Evil: Gar'Skuther gives the player a pleasant introduction when he first meets them on Pangu, only to immediately demonstrate the creation of the Fyrisaba while the player has already seen him toying with the environment on the planet. The damage he does to planets he infects only becomes more pronounced as the game goes on.Gar'Skuther: "Greetings, primitive creature, I am the great and benevolent Gar'Skuther! The smartest life form in the galaxy!"
- Forced Tutorial: Tapti starts you out on the continent of Fyrse, with mandatory tutorials on befriending the Taptup and killing the Striklet.
- Find the Cure!: The player character's primary motivation is to find Gar'Skuther and get a cure for their friend Little Oogie. Killing Gar'Skuther cures not only Little Oogie, but the entire galaxy.
- Final Boss: Gar'Skuther, as is to be expected. You can choose to fight him, or engage him in a dance battle. Winning either kills him.
- Galactic Conqueror: Gar'Skuther's ultimate motivation is to conquer the Spore galaxy and turn it into his personal laboratory for his genetic experiments; the planet Zencrie is implied to be his first victim, evidenced by the extensive damage he's caused there.
- Gameplay Automation: One of the most expensive (and useful) cheats is Auto-play Dance, which can be used to complete some of the more difficult dance games. Particularly useful against Gar'Skuther, as he can only be "befriended" through an exceptionally hard dance.
- Genetic Abomination: The Fyrisaba found on Flimmil are hybrids of the local Fyristook and Flabawaba created by Gar'Skuther as part of his experiments on the planet's environment.
- Skuthers are the ultimate product of Gar'Skuther's experiments; horrible, highly aggressive creatures with a mass of tentacles for legs.
- Green Thumb: The Leaf Flurry Bio-Power summons a storm of leaves that, after a few moments, deals heavy damage to any creatures nearby that aren't friendly.
- Grows on Trees: The "Meat Trees Banana Beasts" cheat will replace all the fruits in trees with meat equivalents. This can be very useful when playing as a carnivore as you no longer have to kill creatures or eat Sporelings for food. Can also occur if you have the "Alternate Food" cheat enabled, which can results in things like donuts and waffles growing from trees as well.
- Have a Nice Death: Gar'Skuther will mock you if you attempt to out-dance him and fail, which kills you for some reason. Considering how fast and note-dense his dance is, this is bound to happen.Gar'Skuther: "You dance like a one-legged Oogie in a rainstorm. Come back when you get some real moves".
- He Knows About Timed Hits: Specifically, your character does. A significant portion of Tapti is spent with your own creature telling you how to play the game, such as which icons to press and how to perform certain useful actions.
- Healer Signs On Early: The Heal Bio-Power is the earliest one you get as a reward for helping one of the Meepers, and is essential going forward as you encounter more and more creatures with Bio-Powers of their own.
- Healing Boss: Gar'Skuther has the best healing ability in the game and will always save it for when he's close to death. He might also use it several times.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The player's creature is named "Oogie" by defult, but can be renamed at the very beginning of the story. However, due to how the game's autocensor works, picking a name for the player creature can get frustrating, and the name cannot be changed ever again after this point. Not to mention that the player's name is never used in game, rendering their assigned name completely pointless.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: By and large, any herbivorous creatures you meet on your journey will be friendly and open to socialization. The only notable exceptions to this are when creatures are struggling over dwindling resources brought on by Gar'Skuther's plague later in the story; in fact, once you cleanse the lowlands of Baysee, the herbivorous creatures there will immediately become friendly again.
- Hostile Terraforming: Gar'Skuther's experiments on planets tend to include modifying their climates to be significantly colder, infecting the local flora and fauna with awful diseases, and creating genetic abominations for his own research purposes.
- Informed Attribute: Some descriptions in the Species Guide don't line up with how the creatures behave. This is most notable in the case of the Arclart, described as having a particularly tough constitution thanks to the shape of its body, even though it has the lowest defense out of any species in its area.
- The Koth blocking the way on Zencrie is described as being covered in scars if you visited all of the landmarks prior to meeting it, even though not a single one is shown on its body.
- Imprinting: The freshly hatched baby Prunebug on Flubit assumes the player character to be its mother, beginning a sidequest to feed it and eventually challenge an elder.
- Insectoid Aliens: Striklets the the very first hostile creatures encountered, taking the appearance of giant blue spider-like things.
- Last Disc Magic: Gar'Skuther's parts and the Round Tail provide the best Bio-Powers in the game and render other Bio-Power giving parts redundant, though almost all of them have to be bought through the Parts Shop for an exuberant sum of Badge Points which you will probably won't have until the end of the game. Gar'Skuther's Arms are given to you at the end of the campaign, playing this completely straight.
- Mad Scientist: A Mad Biologist example in Gar'Skuther, who spends the game making a Synthetic Plague and hybrid monsters. By the time the player catches up to him on Pangu, he's already infected several planets and creatures, with the final step of his plan being to create an army of Skuthers and take over the galaxy.
- Maker of Monsters: Gar'Skuther's creations are all highly aggressive, destructive creatures. His ultimate creation is a species of monsters designed as bioweapons to conquer planets; by the time the player encounters him on Zencrie, he's already overrun the galaxy with them.
- Mana Meter: The Energy meter allows the player to use Bio-Powers and cross dangerous terrain provided they have the right immunity. Energy can be restored by eating flowers or passively regenerated by having a high Energy Refresh stat.
- Missing Secret: After collecting the starmap on Flubit, the player character mentions looking for hidden starmaps in other regions on the planet. Flubit only has one region and there are no secret starmaps anywhere in the game.
- Some Sporeling parts can appear in the parts menu as "missing part" silhouettes. These parts are completely unobtainable outside of external cheating.
- On planet Freezle, there's a cave with an invisible wall surrounding its entrance. There is absolutely no way into this cave even though it's otherwise readily accessible to the player.
- Monster Compendium: The Sporepedia's Species Guide allows you to view each of the core creatures you have encountered, their stats, available Bio-Powers, the number of them you've killed and befriended, and some brief flavor text about them. There's also the Saved Creatures guide which allows something similar with any player-made creations, albeit without descriptions.
- Natural Weapon: Take your pick from numerous spikes, talons, whipping and clubbing tails, and various other dangerous bits and baubles when customizing your creatures. And this is to say nothing of the various Bio-Powers that extend the abilities of your beasts even further.
- No Ontological Inertia: Gar'Skuther's galaxy-wide plague dies with him at the end of the plot, along with his Skuthers. The exact reason for this is never explained.
- Non-Indicative Name: The Part Shop exclusive Arclart Horn is not used on the Arclart creature, despite the name, being the only part named after a core creature that doesn't belong to a core creature.
- Non-Lethal K.O.: Allies who are defeated in combat will burrow out and return to their nests without being killed... unless you kill them yourself, in which case that KO is perfectly lethal.
- Omnicidal Neutral: The player can kill anybody in the game barring Little Oogie; if they have any quests to deliver, then those have to be completed before they're fair game. With patience and occasionally out of necessity, it is possible to kill every single creature in each region, and leave everywhere a lifeless wasteland with zero consequence.
- Organ Drops: Various quests will reward you with body parts, and creatures will drop body parts when befriended or killed. Nests will also occasionally produce body parts when you befriend or kill all the creatures at the nest.
- Paper People: Every single creature is rendered as a collection of 2D sprites in a 3D environment, resulting in everything appearing as being made of paper cutouts.
- The Paralyzer: The Stun Bio-Power completely disables the target creature's ability to attack or use their own Bio-Powers, though any active Bio-Powersnote will finish executing.
- Permadeath: If a creature doesn't belong to a nest, killing it will permanently remove it from the world until you replay the level.
- Permanently Missable Content: Any part dropped that is a quest reward or a random drop from interacting with a creature, which is not picked up before leaving an area, will become permanently unattainable without making a new save.
- Failing to save Flubit will screw you out of the chance to collect any parts there until the postgame, making the next planet much more difficult due to you effectively skipping a planet's worth of growth.
- Pictorial Letter Substitution: Being a spinoff of Spore, the "O" in the title, like that of Spore's, is replaced with a stylized spiral galaxy, this time more closely relating to the "exploring the galaxy" nature of the game's plot.
- Point of No Return: A Tough variant; the moment you leave an area or planet in the story, you can never turn back and must proceed with only the parts and experience you have. Granted, you will usually have enough parts around to build a creature capable of solving any problems and you will always be given any necessary parts for hazards, but it can occasionally leave you in an uncomfortable position where you might not have upgrades for Bio-Powers or with an insufficient Social score to befriend any creatures effectively.
- Post-End Game Content: Defeating Gar'Skuther sends you to the Planet Select menu, where you can repeat any previous planet with all of your collected parts, allowing you access to secrets and areas not previously available. You also gain access to Freezle, a bonus planet populated exclusively by Pollinated Creatures.
- The Power of Friendship: Not only can you befriend creatures to assist you in combat, but the most direct way to cure a nest of infected creatures is to befriend them all. You can also choose to defeat Gar'Skuther with the same dancing you used to make friends, and several Koth will come to assist you in the final battle if you're struggling to defeat Gar'Skuther.
- Predators Are Mean: Any creatures that are aggressive by default are typically described by the Species Guide as aggressive, mean, quick to anger, or otherwise highly unpleasant.
- Protection Mission: The penultimate quest on Pangu has the player defending the food supplies of the Bubleebu from the Glob-Lods by hocking rocks at the latter. If even a single piece of food is lost, the mission is failed and the player has to go recuperate the food.
- Rainbow Pimp Gear: A biological example: all of the best parts in the game tend to come from different themes, so if you want to create a creature with the highest possible stats and all the best Bio-Powers, your creature will inevitably become an arcane mass of tentacles, limbs and mouths that in no way go together. note This becomes more prevalent when you try to use parts only from a certain theme, which almost always produces a creature with underwhelming stats or some major deficiencies.
- Rainbow Speak: Important passages in your creature's speech are highlighted in light blue, usually describing where to go or what to do next.
- Random Drops: Both core and Pollinated Creatures will occasionally drop parts when you kill or befriend them, provided those parts aren't a quest reward, a Part Shop part, or one that otherwise has a fixed location somewhere in the world. Note that each region has its own set of drops, with the major exception of the Serpent Body.
- Rare Random Drop: The Serpent Body, an exceptionally rare Torso that exists on only one default Pollinated Creaturenote . You need to continuously farm Pollinated Creatures until the one creature who has it appears, whereupon you can kill or befriend the creature to attain the part. Unfortunately, there are over one hundred Pollinated Creatures that can appear without counting player-created creatures, so you will be paying numerous visits to Freezle.
- Scunthorpe Problem: The censor in Spore Creatures is notoriously overzealous, censoring almost any creature name you come up with no matter how innocent. It's bad enough that you can't name your creature "Whiplie" or "Eyebungle" without it being censored, even though two creatures in the game are named that without being censored.
- Sequel Hook: The game ends with a Meepers stealing your ship, complete with "THE END?" text right before the credits roll.
- Silliness Switch: Several cheats in the Cheat Shop do nothing more than make the game exceptionally sillier, such as turning things random colors, wildly scaling body parts on creatures, turning the food items in the game into desserts, making every NPC a Meepers, having the player constantly emit butterflies and more.
- Sliding Scale Of Linearity Versus Openness: A Level 2; there are sidequests to accomplish and you get some level of choice in how you deal with certain scenarios, but every player will encounter the same sequences of events from beginning to end.
- The Social Darwinist: Gar'Skuther mentions that his experiments are, to some extent, motivated by wishing to purge the galaxy of the weakest creatures so the strongest can thrive.Gar'Skuther: "You see, I look for species that hold potential and experiment on them. The weak die and the strong live, thus helping out the entire galaxy!"
- Starfish Aliens: Take your pick from the 31 creatures in the Species Guide, from the lowly Oogie to the eldritch Skuther and everything in between. Almost literally with the Starspecks, a species of flightless birds shaped like stars.
- Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Go ahead, try and eat a Sporeling. You'll be treated to an awful mechanical gnashing sound as it cries in pain before you swallow it whole.
- Synthetic Plague: Gar'Skuther has been cooking one up since before the events of the game, with infected creatures growing unsightly tentacles. He plants to use it to conquer the Spore galaxy and turn it into his personal laboratory for his genetic experiments.
- Tentacled Terror: Victims of Gar'Skuther's infection sprout black and purple tentacles identical to the ones he uses as legs.
- That Makes Me Feel Angry: The player character's main mode of speaking is this, expressing emotions for both themselves and other characters when they aren't educating the player on how to play the game.
- Timed Mission: Flubit begins with one, where the landing of the player's ship causes rock slides that plug various geysers across the planet. Failing to unplug them will cause Flubit to explode, though clearing a vent will refresh and extend the already forgiving timer. Unplugging them all will save the planet, leaving the player free to explore.
- Title Drop: The story takes place across the aptly named Spore galaxy.
- Unexpectedly Human Perception: Your creature can see the world perfectly without eyes (or with eyes that clearly aren't human-like, such as insect eyes) and can hear clearly without ears, as can every other creature in the game.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: Some of the Sporelings use special variants of core parts that cannot be legitimately attained by the player.
- Inverted with various parts from throughout the campaign and most of the parts from the Parts Shop, which appear on no creatures in the core game.note
- Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: All over the place; the Skuzzalopes have two sets of arms and a pair of legs as do the Lileepas, the Bubleebu have two sets of legs and a pair of arms as do the Taktos, the Whiplies have two sets of legs, a pair of arms and a tail...
- Video Game Caring Potential: Encouraged throughout the game and marketing. You can play games with various creatures, feed them, cuddle and dance with them, and bring Sporelings back to nests to resurrect extinct species. You can even do this with creatures who are innately hostile, including the Fyrisaba, Whiplie, and Glob-Lod. There's even a hidden Skuther on Tapti you can befriend.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: To an extent that occasionally goes beyond what Spore permitted. You can kill friendly creatures, devour Sporelings, and generally lay waste to every planet you come across with surprisingly little consequence.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Harming or killing any creatures at a friendly nest will unsurprisingly end your friendship with them and keep you from using their nest until you win it back."My cruel actions have been noted. The nest is no longer my friend."
- Picking fights with friends will drop their friendship with you, and they'll no longer be willing to follow you until you earn it back.
- Wipe That Smile Off Your Face: You're only ever required to have a mouth during the tutorial, after which you can take it off at any time and live just fine without it, since eating is only required to recover health.
- You All Look Familiar: Zig-Zagged throughout the game. Some quests will have the quest-giving creature be an identical copy of any other member of said species, whereas others note will have alternative coloration to denote a notable individual.
- You Can't Thwart Stage One: No matter how fast you reach the end of the game, Gar'Skuther has already begun overrunning the galaxy with Skuthers, leaving you with no choice but to fight him.
