“Spore Creature Creator”
Genre: God game, life simulation
Developer: Maxis
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platforms: PC, Mac
Price: $9.99 (A smaller trial is free to download)
ESRB rating: E (everyone)
Grade: A

Apologies for going silent here the past couple of days, but Game Guy has been wading pretty deep into “Spore” Creature Creator.

And if he can have this much fun with just a game tool, imagine how attractive the game itself will be.

That’s right, Creature Creator isn’t a game; it’s merely a utility for building the avatars needed to play “Spore,” the long-awaited, much talked-about, computer-based massively single-player God game coming in September. “Spore” lets gamers shepherd Creature Creator-made organisms through evolution from single-cell status all the way up to sentient, space-traveling life form.

“Spore” has been in the development stage for about four years. Creature Creator, however, came just out last week and offers a hint of the complex creationism to come.

We spoke of Creature Creator in our last post; now, we’ve had time to try it, and the overall verdict is rather favorable. Imagine combining Play-Doh, Etch-a-Sketch, Mr. Potato Head and Adobe Illustrator into one toy, and you’ve got an idea how Creature Creator works.

But until gamers try it, they have no idea how addictive it can be. Creations can look silly or serious, and they even can be made to sing and dance. All one needs to do is use the mouse to drag parts — feet, eyes, nose, mouth, etc. — onto a shapeless blob that can be digitally twisted and squeezed into something capable of surviving the rigors of a “Spore”-world.

There are a few minor limitations. Each creature must be similar in size, have at least two sets of appendages and not too many noses or mouths. The features are worth points toward survival, so it makes sense to design wisely.

And there are a wealth of designs out there. Electronic Arts says about 250,000 critters took shape on Creature Creator’s first day. (The utility also permits importing video clips of each creation onto YouTube.)

But back to the limitations: It helps to have Creature Creator running on a Microsoft Vista-based PC running at least 2 gigabytes of memory, or an Intel-based Mac.

It helps as well to have plenty of spare time. Playing God, however fun with Creature Creator, can really eat the clock.