Gameplay Changes
The gameplay itself had numerous changes during development. The most striking was the shift in realism, from the gritty depiction of cellular and animal life in the GDC 2005 debut, to the current iteration of a more round, softer edged depiction of the creatures. The most visible change was in the cellular phase, which transformed the unicellular organisms into strange insects with cartoonish, human-like eyes, which were used "to make it cute", according to Wright during the 2007 TED seminar. According to Wright, the Spore development team was broken into two camps, the "Cute" camp that wanted to skew the game's focus towards a The Sims-type of game, and the "Science" camp that wanted to keep the game as realistic as possible. The final version was more or less a compromise between the two; Wright stated, "We ended up with a very nice balance of the two factors."
Another constantly changing aspect was the number of phases in the game. Initially, in 2005, the game consisted of seven phases: Cell, Underwater, Creature, Tribe, City, Civilization and Space. During the annual Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Digital Illusions CE Summit on February 7, 2007, a slide was displayed (see image, right) which listed a total of eight phases. The Underwater phase had been removed, and Molecular was added (which was likened to Tetris). Furthermore, the Space phase was split into Terraform and Galactic phases; terraforming represented a limited form of power to slowly change planets within one's own system, whilst the galactic phase represented a more god-like power upon the acquisition of the interstellar space drive: being able to travel outside of one's solar system. The 2007 TED seminar in March 2007 displayed only five phases. The Molecular and Cellular phases had been condensed into one Cell phase. The City stage had been removed, and from Wright's demonstration it appears that the stage has been assimilated into the start of the Civilization phase. Furthermore, the two last phases were condensed back into the single Space phase.
In Wright's 2005 demonstration, the creature with which he began looked remarkably similar to his earlier microbe. This led many people to believe that the creature was based upon the microbe's appearance. However, in a 2006 video from E3, narrated by a senior programmer, it was said that the player will initially begin as a slug-like animal. The narrator further stated the reason for this was to allow for more player creativity. This created uncertainty as to which method would be used in the final game; particularly as a later video demonstrated the essence of the cell creature emerging from a pond. The 2007 TED Presentation in March 2007 again depicted a legless, slug-like creature emerging from the water, leaving a trail of slime in its wake. The cellular phase was renamed as the tide pool phase, then called the cell phase months later. The final phases: Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization and Space were the five available stages at the final release of Spore.
Two notable locomotive abilities for the creatures were also the subject of speculation during the long development:
Read more about this topic: Development Of Spore, History and Development