The Spore Creatures iPhone game ($6.99) is the type of game in which it is easy to lose yourself. After an initial brief customization screen, you’re thrust onto a beach where your little spore is instructed that eating things in the game fills up your DNA meter, which in turn allows you to evolve.
Once you figure that out, you move your spore around by tilting your iPhone and you’re pretty much off to the races, snacking on pretty much anything you can get your hands on. Suddenly, you look up and you’ve lost track of time, completely immersed in trying to feed your ever-evolving spore.
What’s even better is that there’s actually a fair bit of depth to Spore Creatures. It’s not as simple as walking around gobbling up everything in an environment and calling it a day. The abilities that you, via your evolution, have can be switched out depending on the kind of spore you’re looking to create.
Initially, you get arms that help you move faster, but perhaps you’d prefer the flippers you acquire later in the iPhone game for more aquatic travel? Spore Creatures really does present a lot of options for someone who wants to create several different kinds of creatures.
All of this customization comes at a price. That price is about $7, which seems like an awful lot to pay for an iPhone game. Electronic Arts hasn’t been shy about producing deep games and charging for them, but with no way to demo an iPhone game to see if you might enjoy it, the price tag could certainly make folks pause before downloading.
If I had one game play-related gripe, it’s that while inventive, tilting the phone to move your spore actually detracts from playing the game. The graphics here are quite unique, what with your odd-looking spore and the creatures it encounters, but you’d have to crane your neck to see some of that because you’re often tilting the phone away from yourself. Sometimes iPhone games are enhanced by tilt-features, but Spore Creatures isn’t one of them.
That problem and the price point aside, Spore Creatures is at worst a very unique iPhone game that I’d feel comfortable recommending to people who are looking for a game that feels just a little different, but the price point should be taken into consideration. If you’re a frugal iPhone purchaser, you may want to look elsewhere.
