So along with Season 2, there is a PSP3 and Xbox game, and a music album, and of course quite a few marketing downloads. Afro Samurai is wonderful eye candy so this is all good, and these guys have even gone so far as to create iPhone downloadable wallpapers… which gives me all sorts of warm and fuzzy feelings inside. So what do I do as a well conditioned consumer, I jump on my trusty iPhone to download said images, what could be cooler. And what do I discover, the site navigation is all based on Flash, and as anyone who uses an iPhone or maybe read mac news, Flash does not yet work on the iPhone (don’t get me started on this one). Ok, fine, I think, easy to click on a news article and see the house ad for the wallpapers… which I do. And lo and behold, what do I discover, the downloads page (for iPhone wallpapers and desktop wallpapers only) is totally Flash based. I give this a big FAIL. Does no one actually try and test a website anymore. Did no one actually think, “hey, let’s actually download this onto an iPhone from the site!”. Alas, these guys couldn’t be bothered with a non-Flash version, or gasp, text navigation links on the bottom, so here are the images for those of you that happen to land here.

TGISource did a good review of the game:

Essentially, the game is empire-building. You register an account, choose a world (server) to play on, and then you’re plopped down on a random island. A big part of the game involves building up your town, doing research, and managing resources. Which, of course, ends up being pretty fun. Harvesting of materials and research is automatic, and the only decision to be made is how many citizens to devote to each (citizens without specific tasks will generate gold).

The big test will be time and if my interests keep up with the game. Of course, the first time my butt gets kicked might also have an impact.

This was reflected in other design choices. Rather than force the player to start at the “cell” level, you can instead select between any of the five different parts of the game right from the start. While this is certainly sure to be a controversial decision — it takes a lot away from the sense of growth and expansion that I believed the game would have if it forced you to start from the beginning — it’ll let anybody jump in wherever they feel most comfortable.

It’s hard to say if this is just jumping on the “casual” buzzword bandwagon or actually meaningful. It is true that the Sims are some of the most popular of video games with a broad audience, and the best example of a “hard-core” video game gateway (and Spore and the Sims are from the same creator). Maybe it just comes down to what casual is referring to. When I worked in the industry, casual usually meant that the development costs were low compared to hard-core games, but nowadays it is more closely tied to how quickly a person can finish a game. So thats going to make Spore an interesting hybrid. The Cell Stage of the game will be available as a Mobile version and will have some very quick play. The Creature Creator will be also on the DS in a simplified version and allow for exchanging and brilliant upsell to buy the full game. So can you really call a game Casual if its got a few parts that can be played casually or you can skip some Stages for quicker play? I think not, but I’m sure it will get some traction from the press that way, and that will drive some sales, and a Wii version wouldn’t hurt.

I am a huge fan of the sim category of games, especially the Civilization series (1,2 and 3), though I never really got into the Sims which I found too tedious. The ability in Civ to jump start and skip some of the boring beginning was an excellent way to speed up a game. Each game would usually take a full day to complete. I have been greatly looking forward to Spore since I watched the demo a year ago. Granted I can see why many are frustrated by the endless delays over the years and the huge expectations from the game.

This is a little flash game that uses the Digg API to pull content… which you then have to shot.

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Seen from TechCrunch.