It appears Maxis has listened to many of their fans and made a number of changes to their new web-based game, Psychic Spore.  MaxisCactus provides us with a list posted over at the official Sporum:

Thanks for all of your Psychic Spore feedback! The game has been updated based on your requests and ideas.

Summary of Features/Improvements based on community feedback:

  • Expanded word list including specific suggestions by cormorana, okknaggs88 amd DumBlob
  • Decreased skip penalty
  • Word reveal on skip
  • Updated fonts for better clarity
  • Additional hints

Expanded notes:

Luminar wrote: -10 is way too harsh for a skip. You can only skip twice before you’re done, pretty much.

josie990 wrote: Fun! I just wish I had a little bit more time.

The -10 skip penalty has been reduced to -5. This should give you a bit more time.

BenKane wrote: I happen to think it’s a very fun game. except when I got to a certain limit, it started repeating things.

darkness555 wrote: i have run into the same quistions multiple times, and sometimes the sames ones in a row.

The demo wordlist of a little over 100 words has been replaced with the full word list of almost 2,000 words. Currently, 1,000 have enough associated creations to be chosen by the game, but as players create more creations, the full 2,000 have the potential to become available.

AndrewBot89 wrote: One thing would suggest, though, is making your ‘I’ a little more obvious. I once got Irish as my tag, and kept trying Leprechaun as it because i thought it as an ‘L’.

Great suggestion. The font has been updated to better distinguish the ‘I’ from the ‘L’.

okknaggs88 wrote: Heres some i thought of that you could put in there: Cthulhu, Yog-sothoth, Shub-niggurath, Hastur, Shoggoth, Byakhee, Mi-go, Azathoth, Lovecraft, Cthulhu mythos, Eldritch, Put them in.

DumBlob wrote: Heres some i thought of that you could put in there: Maxis, Blob, Scary, Apple, Pickle, Jackel, Devil, Superman, Kirby, Poop (If thats allowed), Skeleton, Zombie, Crab, Will Wrightm, Cactus, Plant, Fish, Airplane, Car, That should Give a little more Variety to this game.

cormorana wrote: Do you want more words, I have someones: Cactus, Tucan, SpongeBob, Monster, Eiffel

Awesome new entries. You can check out the current full taglist here. Some of the words you entered are already in the new expanded list just released.

  • These words were added to the game, based on your suggestions: Blob, pickle, scary, Hastur, Byakhee, Lovecraft, Azathoth, eldritch, shoggoth, toucan
  • These words have not been tagged to at least 8 creations that ever had a rating over 3, so will not currently show up in game: Hastur, Byakhee, Azathoth, eldritch, shoggoth
  • These words were already in the game (great minds think alike!): Maxis, Apple, Jackal, Devil, Skeleton, Zombie, Crab, Wright, Cactus, Plant, Fish, Airplane, Car, Cthulhu, Monster, Eiffel
  • These words were not added based on copyrights: Superman, Kirby, SpongeBob
  • These words were omitted because they contain illegal characters such as space or hyphen: Yog-sothoth, Shub-niggurath, Mi-go, Cthulhu mythos

Also, poop was not added, mostly because I don’t really want to see this set. Keepin it classy.

MinorAnnoyance wrote: I’m reluctant to hit skip because sometimes I’d really like to know what the common word was, but at the end of the game it only gives you the answer for the one you ran out of time on. I’d like to know all the ones I missed.

This comment really highlights a flaw in the design which encouraged users to time out to satisfy their curiosity. A new feature has been added that shows the skipped word on skip.

ashkelon wrote: I also got bitten by knowing the answer but not how to spell it. My spelling is HORRIBLE.

Here’s to having to survive without autocorrect. I think we’ve all forgotten the way.

Seiniyta wrote: On the little game, it’s for someone which’s native langauge isn’t English is pretty hard at times.

To alleviate this, especially with the new, harder word list, two more hints pop up as the timer ticks down. Hopefully this will make the game a little easier!

Give it a spin, and see how your ideas have improved the game!
Play now