Tide Pool Phase

Introduction to life within the soup

The first phase of Spore is spent in the Tide Pool, a two dimensional primordial soup inhabited by small and large organisms. You have control over one of these organism and your goal is to eat green plankton or smaller organisms, asexually reproduce and avoid the numerous (larger) predators that live with you and view your creature as their late night snack. The more you eat and divide, the larger you will become until eventually you will be able to reach land. The type of food a creature needs to sustain itself and grow depends on what sort of mouth appendage it has. A creature with a filter-feeder mouth looks for plant buds (green plankton), while a jaw like mouth is ideal for consuming smaller creatures. You can see the beginning of a herbivore/carnivore distinction.

From Simple to Complex

Throughout the tide pool phase you will gather DNA points (literally strands of DNA floating in the pool) which can be spent to customize your organism’s motility and its ability to defend itself. Most motility modifications come in the form of flagella, a long wavy tail capable of propelling cells as it beats. On the other hand, most protection addons come in the form of large spikes that can be used to attack hostile organisms. As you grow, eventually you will evolve from a unicellular protozoa to a multicellular organism. At this point you have access to a greater number of upgrades, including tentacles.

The Crawl to land

Interestingly, to reach land your organism will not need to develop a set of legs - your slug like creature will crawl its way onto land and eventually develop legs once it is more advanced (this occurs in the creature phase). Originally, there was suppose to be a intermediate phase between the primordial soup and land environments, in the form of underwater creatures. However, between 2005 and now, the underwater part of the game was removed all together.

Tide Pool Interface

1. DNA Points - Find these points within the soup (literally), can be spent to upgrade the organism
2. Zoom Multiplier - It’s a progress bar on a microscopic zoom scale, the larger the zoom, the smaller the creature is. As the green moves more towards the right, the organism is becoming larger and the zoom is decreasing.
3. Current Zoom - Current position on the multiplier bar, the further this is on the bar, the larger and more advanced the organism is. Once the organism reaches a size delineated by the end of the bar, it may enter the creature phase.

In the end, what is the Cell phase?

The Tide Pool phase is rather simplistic in nature and will only last roughly 6 generations of your organism. It is intended to introduce Spore and some if its underlying mechanics, an extensive tutorial if you will. Will Wright has often compared the gameplay of this phase to Pac-Man - it is far more arcade like than any of the other gameplay stages.