The first screenshots of the Spore expansion, Galactic Adventures, have arisen from an event last night held by Maxis. Along with that, Kotaku have done a series of impressions on what the expansion is going to contain. I have to say, it’s all going in a very unexpected direction; MMO type quests using the (dreary) creature stage as a basis? I hope it’s a little more deep than that, but at the moment it sounds like the most uninspired part of the expansion. There is, however, the option to utterly build a planet from the ground up, which was some of the strongest parts of the original game. The problem was merely not having the tools at your disposal. Hopefully this will be entirely different, instead giving you full freedom before you begin.

There also seems to be a startling amount of city building that was somewhat lacking from the original, especially the somewhat strange maze shot. Are we going to be able to create Sims-esque traps of death to slowly starve and tire our creatures to death? I do hope so, as it’s the perfect punishment for when they wet themselves. Not that Spore creatures have bladders, but I’m sure there’s an equivalent menial task they can fail at.

No word yet about reducing the annoyance of the space stage, but if they don’t, I’d be very surprised, as it’s the biggest weakness of the game so far. They’ve also announced Creature Keeper, a game which sounds essentially like Nintendogs but with Spore creatures. Presumably for children, but we’re sure there are plenty of soft on the inside, hard on the outside gamers who’d just love to interact a little more with their creations. Am I right?

Galactic Adventures is set to be released in the spring, but hasn’t been given a solid release date yet. Keeps your eyes (or eye) and ears (however many of them you have) open. Apologies for the awful pun.