Life, the Universe and Everything. It was the name of a book in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It's also what gaming luminary Will Wright is gunning for in his most ambitious title as of 2008, Spore.

Gamers are charged with creating life, then guiding it through numerous stages of evolution and civilisation until ultimately their species is travelling the cosmos.

Things start off with Cell Phase in which players get to muck around in the primordial ooze, fiddli ... more >>

Life, the Universe and Everything. It was the name of a book in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It's also what gaming luminary Will Wright is gunning for in his most ambitious title as of 2008, Spore.

Gamers are charged with creating life, then guiding it through numerous stages of evolution and civilisation until ultimately their species is travelling the cosmos.

Things start off with Cell Phase in which players get to muck around in the primordial ooze, fiddling with the building blocks of life and trying to snatch up scraps of DNA. After trolling around in this top-down, 2D ocean, players will eventually grow big enough to sprout legs and toddle off onto land.

And so they enter the Creature Stage! Fresh from the primordial soup, the creatures will be pretty simple, but once enough DNA is gathered, players will be able to hit the Creature Creator to spend it. This will be the best bit for many players, as they put together a huge number of different body parts and customise to their heart's content in the race to create an alien that can survive.

Still, it's a long way between crawling onto land and the vastness of space. On the way, players will go through tribal living to the formation of society and then finally on into the Black. They'll encounter elements of RTS play, management and even combat.

While Spore is fundamentally a single-player game, throughout play gamers will encounter the creations of other users. Electronic Arts has set the game up so that the creations of others will be extracted and will pop up on different machines. For those that want a bit more credit with their creativity, there's also the option to post creatures on Sporepedia for the whole world to see.

This is your key to Godhood. A little scary, eh? << less