I’m sure most of you know by now that the version of Spore released on the Nintendo DS is not the full version. And for those of you that didn’t know, where’ve you been? While the full-fledged version of Spore follows your creature through all the phases of evolution, from single-celled fella to spacefaring explorer, Spore Creatures, the DS version, focuses primarily on the creature phase of the game, meaning that you’re a somewhat evolved, capable little creature, and it’s up to you to work your way toward different types of body parts by socializing with and defeating the different creatures you meet along the way. Spore Creatures also has an innate plot, unlike its “massively single-player online” brother, which is rather open-ended.

Upon starting the game, we’re informed that an alien is spreading an infection that is mutating the different creatures that inhabit this particular galaxy. His target is a planet named Tapti, but you are the snag in his plan, one little spore creature that won’t go down so easily. You see yourself bust out of your egg in the ocean and immediately get ashore, surprised that you’ve survived this far. Two of you made it out alive, and together you make a “protection pact,” to ensure that you both stay alive, but wouldn’t ya know it, your little buddy gets abducted by a spaceship. So basically the whole plot of the game is to amongst various side goals, save your friend, Little Oogie.

In order to do this, you have to interact with the other creatures you meet along the way. Some of them will like you; these are the ones you cuddle and dance with in an effort to get them to fully trust you, at which point they’ll follow you into battle, or let you use their nest. Nests are the areas you go to change your character around. Like I said earlier, you gain various body parts from all the creatures you encounter, through accomplishing side missions, killing things, and making friends. Once in a nest, all you have to do is tap yourself, then tap the egg icon that pops up, and you’ll be in edit mode. It’s a far cry from what the full PC game’s creature editor can do, but I think it’s safe to say that this version of the editor is definitely full and unique enough to provide some laughs, as well as a satisfactory RPG feel to the game. You can mess around with your creature’s eyes, mouth, arms, body, legs, tail, and… back shingles? You can change your creature’s color or add a texture to it, too. Luckily for me, there’s an undo button. Comes in handy when you accidentally hit the trash can and toss away your whole creature. As you level up, you get more body points, which allows you to use more and more body parts. As you progress, you’ll find a good variety of parts for each specific category. Some parts come equipped with what the game calls bio-powers, which give you the ability to do special actions, like shoot fire or heal yourself in battle. As well as bio-powers, some body parts allow you to do stuff that you normally can’t do, like swim in deep water, walk on thorns and ice, etc. Normally, walking on these surfaces would very quickly deplete one’s health, but with the right parts equipped, it will slowly drain your energy, rather than killing you within a few seconds.

The aforementioned health and energy bars work just like they do in most other RPGs; you get hit, you lose health. Your energy is for those nifty bio-powers. The higher your level (raised by socializing, fighting, and doing missions), the more health and energy you get. Fighting is one of the aspects of the game I didn’t enjoy as much as I could’ve. When it comes down to it, the fighting system in Spore Creatures is extremely simplistic; slash your way to a victory, hoping the parts you’ve attached to yourself make you stronger than the other creature(s). A vertical slash is a slower, more powerful hit, and a horizontal slash is faster but a bit weaker. You can heal yourself with bio-powers, but there’s only so much that can do. You really just have to slash as much as possible and hope for the best. However, you’ll find that dying doesn’t make much of a difference in this game, as you’ll come back immediately in the nearest nest you’ve used, with slightly less health and energy. Make sure to make note of the fact that you aren’t limited to one part per category, for example, it’s usually good to have two mouths on, one that eats meat and one that eats fruit, otherwise it gets annoying to only be able to eat one type of food. Then again, there are mouths that eat both types of food. But remember that it is possible to have more than one of a body part, and is often-times advantageous.

Speaking of food, your metabolism will make a big difference in the game. Your metabolism is altered by the different mouths you put on. If you have a high metabolism, the things you eat will count for more health and energy. Low metabolism, the opposite. This is something you should take advantage of, because once you level up a lot and your total health is a few hundred points, eating stuff that raises your health about twenty points at a time starts to get annoying.

As far as the nests go, the developers of this game have included an incredibly convenient way of dealing with them. They’ve included a “burrow” button, which will take you back to your last used nest. Not only that, but if you hit it again after you’re done customizing in the nest, you’ll go back to exactly where you were when you first hit it. Like I said, incredibly convenient.

Socializing to make friends is the opposite of fighting with them, but it often leads to the same outcome. Whether you kill or befriend a creature, you’re probably going to get one of their body parts, and if you kill/befriend enough of them, you can use their nest. The game has a cool way of adapting to your dark desires too, if you choose to just kill everyone. If you start killing a group that was friendly toward you, they’ll fight back, and it changes your goals and the dialogue to reflect the fact that, oh well, they’re mad at you now, might as well kill the rest of ‘em anyway. If you decide to socialize with them, it can be fun. There are two ways to socialize with creatures, both brought on by calling to them: first, smiley faces will float up from the creature you called to, at which point you’re supposed to drag them down and basically pet the creature with them; second, a flower will float up, and you drag it on top of the creature to start the dancing mini-game. It’s a rhythm game, there are flowers across the screen, and from the bottom-middle of the screen, little glowing balls shoot out. You have to tap them with the stylus when they get to the middle of the flower. This is a deceptive little game, as it starts out as easy as possible, but eventually, it can get so hard you have no idea what to do. It doesn’t get that hard till very late in the game, but rest assured, it does. And that’s one thing that I found to be universal in this game; it’s sort of a hard game, ostensibly disguised as a kids game. As cartoony and easy as it looks, it does present some challenging parts, especially if you don’t know how to set up your character to fight.

You can walk with the D-Pad (or the A, B, X, and Y buttons if you’re a leftie), but most of the control is done with the stylus, and you can use it to walk if you so choose. To get things done, you tap them. Tap a tree to shake it to get the fruit down, tap a creature to fight with it, have it follow you, or stop following you, tap an infected nest to cure it once you’ve befriended or killed all the inhabitants. The walking system is hard to use and annoying at certain points because of the 2D graphical nature of the characters, but it’s a minor issue. Also, sometimes the stylus is a bit inaccurate, which I think is due to the game, not the DS itself because I re-calibrated my touch screen and continued having the issue. It’s not that big of a deal, though.

The characters are 2D while the background and background objects are 3D, so it’s kinda like a more basic Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword graphical configuration. And I think it was the most logical type of animation for this game, but every so often you come across a specific type of creature, or body part, that just does not render well in 2D; you can’t tell what it is and it just looks like a jumbled mess. Also a minor issue, but it may pull you out of the Spore world a bit once in a while.

As you move from area to area, you have to do missions along the way. Missions can be simple, like race a creature from one area to another, or they can be complex, like when you’re timed to break gigantic boulders in a certain order in a volcano whose pressure is rapidly rising. Sometimes if you fail the mission, you’ll have to advance without completing it, while other times you can go back and redo it. The game contains some nifty little cutscenes after completing some of these missions.

I think if Spore Creatures has taught me anything, it’s that you should cuddle and dance with as many people as possible; it might just get them on your side in a fight one day. I have to admit, I thoroughly enjoyed this version of Spore. Though it’s not nearly as expansive as its older sibling, I found this game to be satisfying and full in many ways. The adventure in the game is the perfect length, slightly long for a DS game, but in general a very solid, 12-level experience. I’ve gotta admit, this game feels a lot like a Pokémon game. Even the Sporepedia, your method of keeping track and finding info on the creatures you’ve encountered, severely reminds me of the Pokédex, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It definitely has a few downsides, it’s inaccurate sometimes, walking can be difficult in a few situations because of your 2D-ness, a couple characters don’t translate well to 2D, and I absolutely loved how the final boss just sat there and told me his weakness. That was great. Overall, though, I thought this game was fantastic, and I would totally play through it again. And maybe once after that, too. Don’t pass this by because it looks like a kids game.