14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts has confirmed at the Macworld Expo today that Spore will become available for Mac users too later this year. Will Wright's god game is set for display at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, CA throughout this week. The PC version will be released later this year.
"We couldn't be happier to bring Spore to the Mac at the same time as the PC version. Spore is a highly creative game and I look forward to seeing what the players come up with to fill the universe they design," said Will Wright, Chief Designer of Spore.
Spore is a simulation that "ranges from the molecular phase to the galactic phase." It will consist of several long phases, each with its own style of play. Will Wright, the game's designer, also mentioned in an earlier interview that he wanted players to be able to spend as much or as little time as they wanted in each stage - one of the reasons for which development took so long and delayed the game's release. For example, if one person likes the creature stage, the game will not force him to move on until he's ready.
Spore is a "teleological evolution" game, "God game" genre to be more exact, where the player's task is to mold and guide a species across many generations, growing it from a single-celled organism into a more complex being. Eventually, the species would become sapient at which point the player sets the rules of that species' society. The goal is to progress the living being (intelligent at this point) towards space-exploration. Spore's main innovation is the use of procedural generation for many of the components of the game, providing vast scope and open-endedness.
Both the PC and Macintosh versions of the game will feature the full experience of cell through to space with editors for designing creatures, buildings, and vehicles, according to EA. The Mac version will be made possible through TransGaming's Cider Portability Engine, as the same report informs.