Spore‘s audience, by and large, seems to skew pretty young. Judging by the list of most popular adventures, one is sorely tempted to add crass and easily amused as well.

Much in the way the release of the Spore Creature Creator saw an initial explosion of ambulatory phalluses, Galactic Adventures is currently undergoing a somewhat similar event as the Spore playerbase once again gives rein to its collective id.

Some of the more popular user-created adventures right now follow the same simple, short and stupid formula. Known as Clark and Stanley adventures, these see the player talk to one of the titular characters and then witness the witless pair’s violent demise. There’s almost no gameplay to speak of in these adventures; it’s simply talk and watch.

Just as the quality of user-created creatures improved over time (the newer ones are downright stunning), the overall quality of adventures should pick up as the young and the dumb move on to other amusements. Just as life finds a way through evolution, quality finds its way to the top given time.

It would help immensely, however, if Maxis did more to establish a higher standard and encourage greater diversity and complexity by providing recognition to creators who make a genuine effort to find new and interesting ways to work with the provided tools.

Did I mention the first Clark and Stanley adventures were released by Maxis?

Behold my latest Spore creation.

I call it … Truck Robo Guy.

I’m currently struggling to craft an adventure using this creation. Thus far, I’ve got some vague concept involving stopping a notorious cultural terrorist named Baikal May who holds entire planets hostage for up to two and a half hours before transforming his hapless victims to deafened glassy-eyed morons.

What, it’s been done already?

Damn.

For those anxiously awaiting further word of the reception to my first Spore Galactic Adventures … adventure, I am proud to announce it has been played a grand total of 32 times by other players thus far. NPD best-selling list, here I come.

Rather than rest on my laurels, I moved on and published my second adventure. If my first adventure was a conventional bug hunt, my second effort took the path less travelled. It’s a puzzle that combines two great things that complement each other so well: a classic board game and landmines.

To be more specific, it’s a chess-based puzzle that sees the player trying to navigate a giant chessboard while avoiding capture by chess pieces. Stepping on a square under attack by a chess piece results in an explosive death courtesy of an invisible mine.

Remarkably, it’s been played a total of 222 times since it was published. This would be reason enough for celebratory cartwheels given the response to my first creation yet there’s more to the tale than that. Hits and popularity don’t always correlate.

As of writing, the most popular user-created adventure has a user-rating of 828, and my second adventure is currently rated,  wait for it, 5.6. (By contrast, my first adventure has a user-rating of 6.9.)

Mulling it over, there are certain insights I gained that I’d like to share …

Ancient board games may not be as popular with the videogame crowd as you might think.

It turns out using failure outcome text to insult frustrated players right before they’re given an opportunity to rate your adventure is not a good idea.

Invoking a name from Greek mythology in the introductory text is a good idea.

Everything‘s better with bongos. (The Incredible Bongo Band. Look it up.)

Spore Galactic Adventures, in a shocking oversight, doesn’t include bongo music.

You can put as much creativity, thought and passion into your adventure as you want, but it’s not going to be anywhere near as popular as an adventure titled “Easy Points 2”.

Spore Galactic Adventure‘s Adventure Creator is much like the creature, vehicle and building editors found in the core game in that there’s a lot of power hidden under a relatively simple interface. As a result, creating a simple adventure will be trivially easy. Users hoping to fine-tune adventures and get individual elements just so might be a little frustrated, however.

There’s an in-game checklist to get users started creating a simple adventure but to get the most out of the Adventure Creator, users will have to look elsewhere.

There are two helpful video tutorials by lead designer Stone Librande on YouTube which will help players come to grips with the basics of adventure creation. Aside from that, there are useful posts on the Spore forums with a FAQ, intermediate-level user tips and notes on the advanced AI settings for creatures.

Oddly, the Steam distribution doesn’t seem to include a manual. The only documentation in the download is a simple text file with keyboard shortcuts. Fortunately, the 28-page manual is available as a PDF file on EA’s site here. The English manual weighs in at 1.4MB but annoyingly, it’s bundled with versions in other languages which bumps the download size up to 44MB.

Pop quiz, hotshot.

How do you turn a plain, no-name Sectoid-derivative like this:

into this:

The answer: pay 29.99 in US dollars to Valve and get the Galactic Adventures expansion for Spore on Steam.

Which, by incredible coincidence, was exactly what I did.

After spending four days with Galactic Adventures, I can now proudly claim to be a Published Author with one Adventure published. I don’t want to toot my own horn here but it’s been played 10 times so far by other players. I know what you’re thinking. 10 whole times! Why, that’s more than Daikatana.

(Please save your applause till the end of the show.)

Granted, this grand adventure takes all of three minutes to complete and it’s about as surprising as Predictable McDirectstein, leader of Linearvania. I’m level-headed enough to not let this achievement go to my head.

But Sid Meier had better watch his ass. Just saying.