“Spore is finished.” Sam Kennedy at 1up (otherwise known as Games for Windows) got a chance to try the first playable demo of Spore ever at the Leipzig Games Conference. All the game’s content is now in place, he says, and EA will spend the next few months until release fixing bugs and making sure every little detail about Spore is exactly perfect.

As for the demo, Kennedy only had enough time to play the Cell and Creature stages before being cut off by EA, but was both impressed and excited by what he saw. Here are some quotes!

What I love even early on is the mood. The blurring effect on the backgrounds, different on each of the water “levels”, and the music — they create such a tranquil setting.

What’s interesting is that during my transition from sea to land, the game informs me of what type of player I am — I’m a carnivore, or I like to behave in a certain way, or I’m super aggressive. It’s an interesting way for players to get some objective feedback from game — which could be considered for strategic purposes (perhaps I should change the way I play) or simply for humor value.

Make sure you read the entire preview, and then come talk about it in the forum thread! (just click the “forum discussion” link below this article)

The Leipzig Games Convention has begun, and the Spore goodies have begun to pour out! So far, we have two trailers featuring the best of every game stage, right from the Cell stage to the Space stage. The first one also features short interviews with the development team, especially Will Wright. Download them below!

As well, the German fansite Spore Source has uploaded several new screenshots for us. Since the last batch of screenshots, the detail level of the playing surface and the appearance of the game has improved a lot - before, Spore looked impressive, now it looks absolutely stunning! Check them out here!

Earlier, Maxis promised to give visitors time to get their hands on the controls of Spore, so we will definitely be seeing a huge amount of unique new screenshots and videos coming out of this conference. Stay tuned in the forums for the latest!

A few days ago on our forums, Gil let us know that a few excellent demo videos from the SIGGRAPH - which is short for Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques (a bit of a stretch, indeed) - had been put up by a user on GamingSteve.com. If you haven’t seen them yet, we’ve uploaded them to our servers for you to download. Don’t be afraid at the large filesize, they are well worth the view!

> “Creating Spherical Worlds” explains in technical terms how the Maxis team created the beautiful looking planets we see in Spore. It has some amazing screenshots of a wide range of terrains, including icy, temperate, and volcanic lava planets. There are even some strange worlds, such as a baseball shaped planet! If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, the demo is in the middle.

> A demonstration on the texturing system Spore uses, which is unique to the game. There is the requisite Creature editor show, as well as a section featuring the more rarely seen Building editor. Both look absolutely excellent, allowing the player to easily create any sort of object imaginable without spending a tedious amount of time on it.

> An in-depth explaination of how the creation tools work in Spore. A creature or vehicle is made up of various smaller objects called rigblocks, which the player can easily modify in shape or size to construct incredibly unique creations. The big attraction in this video is the vehicle editor, another part of the game we haven’t seen much of. It can create amazingly realistic vehicles, which is a bit of a contrast from Spore’s more cartoon styled creatures. This is definitely something that will be very entertaining!

Want to have your ideas heard by the Cities Unlimited development team? Monte Cristo’s Philippe Da Silva (who is a regular poster here) is creating the Cities Unlimited official website, and he’s posted a request for some ideas. He wants to know how we would like the team to interact with us in order to make the best city building game possible. He has two questions for you:

1. How would you like Monte Cristo to communicate with you? How could we make sure we reach, all together, our objectives?
2. You all are part of the community and members of one of the existing community websites: how would you like us to partner with them?

Post your idea for the website in our forum thread.

Of course, there are lots of excellent game concepts floating around as well, and Simphoni is a good place to get them heard. Make sure you register in our forums and post your ideas!

This may be a little late, but in some cases, late is better than never! Thanks to a tip from Dani McDowell, we’ve stumbled upon a SimCity Societies preview from E3 two weeks ago. WorldSims’ ManagerJosh managed to get a pass into E3, and was allowed to take a direct look at the game. Although he did post a written article, the real treasure of this preview is the screenshots. Although they’re photographs of a TV screen, they’re pretty high resolution and fairly clear.

The pictures show some very interesting things, not the least of which is a news ticker. The SimCity news ticker first appeared in SimCity 3000, but was modified for inclusion in SimCity 4. However, many people liked the SC3000 ticker better, and that appears to be what will be included in SimCity Societies. This could be an indication that Tilted Mill is trying to bring the game closer to the traditional SimCity feel, and it’s definitely a step in the right direction. The graphics also appear to have improved drastically since the fifth SimCity was announced way back on June 12. All in all, there are some very good improvements that we haven’t seen in other E3 previews.

More items of significance appeared in the article that WorldSims owner ManagerJosh wrote about his preview. For example, he confirms that mass transit (such as buses and subways), which previously had not been mentioned in any previews, is definitely included in the game. Even though he started off skeptical, ManagerJosh’s general impressions were very good!

This week, IGN’s regular top ten list features game designers and they put Will Wright in second place. IGN says of Will: “Wright is able to tap into common human interests and create some of the most compelling gameplay experiences around” Including our long time favorite SimCity series, Will’s latest game, Spore, also promises to push the limit of gaming as we know it. Indeed, Wright was the inventor of the simulation genre, way back in the days when arcade-shooter games dominated. He’s right behind Shigeru Miyamoto, the designer of iconic Nintendo series such as Mario Bros, the Legend of Zelda, and Donkey Kong. Sid Meier rounds out the top three, having created titles such as the strategy game Civilization (a Simphoni forum favorite as well).

It has been several years now since the debut of city builder games SimCity 4 (by Electronic Arts/Maxis) and City Life, (by Monte Cristo). This month, Electronic Arts announced that it was working on the next SimCity. Then, something unexpected popped up: a screenshot of Cities Unlimited surfaced on the blog of Philippe Da Silva, who is Internet Director at Monte Cristo. Many in the community were excited at the look of the new game, and we were too. Hungry for more information, we got in touch with Philippe to ask a few questions. Because Cities Unlimited is so early in development, he understandably was not able to respond to all the questions we had, but here are the ones he could answer.

Q: We know you’re just about as excited about this game as we are, so we want to thank you for answering our questions!

A: It is my pleasure, thanks for the invite.

READ THE REST! Simphoni Interviews Philippe Da Silva

As you might have heard in the forums, Monte Cristo has been working on a semi-sequel to their city simulation game, City Life. Well, Simtropolis has had the privilege of interviewing Philippe Da Silva on the upcoming game, called Cities Unlimited. Here’s a quote:

Dirk: What were some of the feedback that you received from players of City Life?

Philippe: To summarize they loved the 3D, the freedom of construction and the Building Customization Editor of the Deluxe (world edition) version. They want more transport, graphical realism and financial management.

Not surprisingly, this is exactly what many SimCity fans want, and we’re very excited that Monte Cristo is up to the challenge. In addition, they are looking into adding weather effects to the game, something that has long been the desire of virtual city builders.

Along with the one existing screenshot we’ve seen of Cities Unlimited, the interview also includes a new one, featuring amazing graphics.

After previewing SimCity Societies at a pre-E3 event in Los Angeles, IGN appears to be slightly reassured of the quality of the SimCity series. They have posted a preview article and video on their website, which outline the basic gameplay items and also describe the various types of cities you can build. There are six “societal energies” that you will have to take care of, but the main element of SimCity has been reduced to the following:

If you don’t really want to think that hard, all you need to know is that there’s homes, workplaces, and venues, and that there’s the six societal energies which each building produces. But when you want to get right into it, you’ll see that every single building has its own unique attributes, and some of them have direct action that you can click on, so there’s always something for you to do

You build homes when you want more people, you build workplaces when you want more money, you build more venues when you want more happiness

IGN appears to be on the fence about whether this is good or bad, but they do say the demo lifted their spirits a bit. What they do say, though is that “It probably won’t be the SimCity that fans were hoping for, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be its own brand of good.”

View: Article | Video | Forum Discussion

Thanks to Gil for the tip!

Simphoni 2.0 is now online! This is currently the beta version, which means it’s still in production. It also means that there’s more coming, including game info and screenshots sections! Stay Tuned (and enjoy the new look)!