Spore Creatures, one of the three Nintendo DS demos on display at Nintendo's GDC 2008 booth, promises to offer an experience similar to that of its PC and Mac big brothers. Like the other versions, Spore Creatures is 3D (in a Paper Mario way), and you can dynamically add parts to your creature and have them affect its stats and animations; however, it’s more focused on the creatures themselves rather than its "game of everything" scope on the other platforms. EA is still working on the game in a limited capacity, offering design input to the DS game's developer, Amaze. In many ways, Spore Creatures promises to be a game that's the same, but different.

My game started with Spore's acclaimed Creature builder. I used the DS' stylus to select, drag, and drop different body, eye, mouth, fin, tail, arm, and leg pieces to create my creature, a poor soul who went by the game’s default name of "Oogie" and whose legs were so short that his larger and more impressive arms probably gave him more locomotive potential. Each body part adds to your stats, like social, attack, or energy regeneration. I could also change the base colors of my creature, or apply different patterns to him in an approximation of the PC version's procedural texturing.

Once I was done with that, I got the chance to take Oogie out of the nest (a sort of wooded home base) and explore the game world. It’s a 3D world, but instead of trying to scale down a fully meshed and textured experience, Spore Creatures uses a sort of 2D paper cut-out style much like Nintendo's Paper Mario. It definitely gives the DS game its own soul, and suits the zaniness and wackiness that Spore's player-creation aspects allow to flourish.

A map is displayed on the top screen showing the terrain, my next objective, and other creatures or items in the world. Game play takes place on the bottom screen, and I naturally used my stylus to lead my creature around. I had the option of using the D-Pad, but the stylus worked perfectly.

Eventually I bumped into another creature, causing the game to alert me to the fact that I had discovered a new species. I could peruse all the species I had discovered in an options screen, so there must be a lot of creatures to discover in the process of the game. This particular creature had never met me before, so the game had me make a social call by tapping an icon, causing my guy to emit a call to the other creature. It turned out that this other creature was lonely and "needed cuddling," so after the social call a smiley started floating up out of it. By catching the smiley with my stylus before it floated off-screen I could drag it back and forth over the creature to befriend it. After befriending, I got to dance with the creature by playing a quick minigame. Once befriended, I instructed the creature to follow me, via icons that popped up when I tapped it.

This is another aspect of the PC game that has been translated to the DS. Depending on the body parts you choose for your creature, it will either be more aggressive or more social. A more aggressive Creature is more likely to tackle challenges directly, while a more social creature should be able to befriend others and use their help.

I walked with my new friend and discovered that just as I could tap other creatures to see how I could interact with them, so too could I tap items in the game to try to eat them, or pick them up, or throw them down. I could even tap on creatures to shake them, after which they sometimes dropped an item. I initiated an attack on other creatures in this same way as well, after which my creature would lock-on and circle the other creature, and I'd play a battle-minigame by slashing the other creature with my stylus to take it down.

Later on in the game, I came across what seemed to be a baby member of my species, a "Little Oogie" as the game called it, and watched in horror as a UFO abducted the poor thing. I was told by the booth attendee that there would be other planets to visit, giving Spore Creatures the same universe-wide scope that its computer versions will have.

The UFO crashed and I was sent to investigate it. I was separated from where I needed to go by water that I couldn't swim across, so I needed to find a cave that would lead me off the island. I met another species in the game who gave me a new arm piece to use for my creature. I found that I could instantly return to my nest and use the new piece by using the dig command, and I could also warp back to where I had come from, town portal style, by using the dig command again from the nest. Equipped with the new arm part, I had a much stronger attack and could continue looking for a way to rescue my little Oogie buddy.

What would happen once I reached the UFO crash site? The booth worker said that there would be different planets in the game; maybe I’d get abducted by aliens myself and taken there? Unfortunately, I was beaten down by an especially nasty creature before I could find out, so I’ll have to wait until the game’s September release to find out.