Category:Tide pool phase

From SporeWiki

The game begins with a cinematic of an asteroid falling into a planet, as seen in one of the videos, and then you start the game in the tide pool (also known as cellular phase). The player guides a microscopic creature, a Microbe, through a 2D "Primordial Ooze". The player's Microbe can eat smaller Microbes, but can be attacked and eaten by larger Microbes. After eating several small Microbes, the player's creature lays an egg. When the egg is clicked, the player is taken to the Microbe Editor. After being edited, the player's Microbe will be slightly bigger. Once the creature has been edited many times and has become Macroscopic , the creature phase begins.

The Tide pool phase serves as a sort of tutorial for the main game, introducing the basic tools in a fixed camera mode where gameplay mainly consists of eating and evolving by adding parts to the creature. According to a 15 minute developer demo, "It basically trains you that the game is about creativity, about making your own stuff and getting used to the controls." The most fundamental portion of this stage is the microbe editor, which is used to evolve your microbe. As you progress and get bigger, larger creatures from the background will enter the playing field and try to eat you.

According to a GamingSteve thread, the cellular world is connected to the macroscopic world "in terms of changing your starting point when you enter the macroscopic evolution game".

There are two bars for the multicellular creature in the upper left: creature development and health. Presumably, when the creature development bar is full, the creature evolves to the next phase where the creature emerges from the "primordial ooze" as a slug giving the player a blank slate with which to create a creature.

The tide pool phase is similar to one of Will Wright's favorite games, Pac-Man. It could be compared to the Precambrian time in the real Earth.

[edit] Unanswered questions

1. What cell parts exist in the merged creature editor/microbe editor?
2. What function do viruses play in your microbe's life?

[edit] See also

• Tide pool phase images
• Flow - a game which is similar to the Tide pool phase.