A new interview by Pocket Gamer popped up discussing Spore Creatures for the Nintendo DS. Maxis’ Game Producer Jason Haber went thru the process of explaining information about the DS’s Creature Creator tools as well as the fact you will be able to use the game to pollinate other people.
Pocket Gamer: Was it difficult for Maxis to decide which phase from the PC game to focus on for DS? Why did you decide on the creature phase?
Jason Haber: We of course wanted to bring the full ‘powers of ten’ gameplay to the DS, but when we sat down and looked at what would make the biggest impact we knew that we needed to focus our efforts on building a unique Creature Creator.
Our first step in developing Spore Creatures was to think about how we wanted to approach a Creature Creator that was based around the touchscreen interface of the Nintendo DS. We then began to design the core aspects of the game that reinforced the key features of Spore: creativity, exploration, sharing and collecting.
An avatar based creature design lined up perfectly with these aspects of the game and seemed most appropriate for the DS audience. We decided to focus the design around the evolution of a creature at the planet level with a story that would help drive the goals for the players and their custom creatures.
