In case you missed today’s big announcement, Maxis has released a 2D version of Spore Creature Creator!  Much like it’s 3D counterpart, users can design and train their own creature.  I played around with it for a short period earlier today; now that I’m home from work, I can fully experiment and share my insight.

The Editor

If you’ve used the Spore Creature Creator (standalone or in-game editor), then you’ll quickly be familiar with the layout.  Only things that are different is instead of the “Test Creature” button in the middle, you have a training simulation, as well as a few buttons at the very bottom to load creatures, view Sporepedia and to email your creations.

You start off with a typical spline with all of the parts already unlocked for you.  The concept of moving/scaling the creature is simple, but for some reason I have a hard time executing the task.  You drag to move, but in order to scale you have to use the white circular that appears around your selected piece.  Once you get that nailed down, drag, drop, move and scale your pieces until you piece together the creature of your choice.  For this demonstration I have created a pig in honor of MySims Agents Producer Jeff Green, who recently recovered from a battle with Swine Flu.

There are some minor annoyances.  Mainly one being that you cannot copy parts like arms and legs.  So if you play with the adjusters you’ll have the eye the other parts up to match.  And don’t bother trying to find an undo button, you’ll have to manually take care of your own mistakes.  Oh, and the extra parts with the ?…I wish I could say they were unlockables, but I think they are there as space savers.  Would be cool to see the program updated over time with more parts and options…but who knows what Maxis’ plans are!

The Paint

Hate to be blunt, but while the editor has most of the bells and whistles…the paint section does not.  They have a fantastic color picker to choose from, so you’ll always be able to create a creature with the colors you want in mind.  The disappointing part is that there is no textures to chose from – just a base and detail.  Cannot do scales, stripes or designs…just plain creatures with some areas painted in a gradient style.

Importing your Creatures

The ability to import your own creatures straight from the Sporepedia is a brilliant thought!  Most of my creatures didn’t turn out to well…but I can understand that…going from 3D to 2D has to have limitations.  So I played around navigating the Sporepedia and played with a few.  You’re going to see certain creations that you cannot import – probably due to the fact that it uses parts that is not available in the editor (or symmetry?).  Keep in mind that some of the creature’s designs may be impractically to use for the Creature Trainer…

The Creature Trainer

Instead of the typical arena where we test the creature’s animations in the 3D version, we have a mini-game replacement called “Creature Trainer”.  Guide you creation thru the process known as ‘Spore-Fu’, using various parts of your creature’s body to destroy targets.  For some characters, this can become troublesome as it really depends on the bodystyle and design.  Smaller creatures will have difficult trying to hit the target.  Swiney here did very poorly…but that’s okay, he’ll just pass his flu onto the totem pole spitting out to targets.  Oh, and the funnest part about this game?  Seeing the possible ways you can stretch your creatures and view how it animates.  Porky here looked like an accordion at one point!

How high did you manage to score?  I suck pretty bad, got to level 7 with 2610 points

The Postcard

Once you are finished with your creature, you have the option to send a postcard via email to your friends.  I passed along the Swine Flu to MaxisCactus, MaxisLucky and my friend LadyM.  Will they catch it?  We’ll just have to wait and see.  The only thing missing from this part is an area to type in a custom message.  I wanted to say “You just caught Swine Flu, please pass along to the next 5 people for the cure!” but hopefully the message can be picked up from looking at the image.  Either that or they’ll understand when they read this post 🙂

Oh, and I did get a postcard from MaxisCactus of a spotting from something familiar…The amazing part about this?  Save it to your computer and you can load up the file as the creation in Spore Creature Creator 2D!  Brilliant!

Conclusion

Overall, I have to give a huge cheer to Caryl Shaw and her team of artists and programmers that put this app together.  They did an outstanding job catching most of the main points and packing it into a 2D version.  And since it’s free, we can’t really complain about the issues.  But give it time, it’s bound to get better if they keep tweaking it.  I for once think the possibilities for this app is limitless.  I’d love to see it ported to the iPhone.  How awesome would it be to create creatures from the palm of your hand…and with the ability to take photos you could even put your own creatures on top of your pictures.  Heck, it could even work for the Nintendo DSi.  Make it happen, Maxis!

And thus concludes my report for Spore Creature Creator 2D.  If you haven’t been there yet, please visit http://www.spore2d.com and design your own today!  Good thing I wrapped this up in time…any longer and I may get interrupted by Kan…

Damn…