Spore

One of the highest profile iPhone games to state, EA's Spore, retails on the iTunes App Store for $9.99. Now, however, you can also get a "free" version, Spore Origins Lite Edition (iTunes link). The catch? It's teaser consisting of 1 level. Since Apple doesn't (yet?) have a model for demoing apps ("try" instead of "buy"), it's likely the only thing developers can do to give potential buyers a real preview. They hope, after one or a short number of levels, you'll be hooked enough to pony up the bucks for the full blown version.

(Not one, but two premiere game reviews on TiPb today. If you haven't already checked out the review of The Force Unleashed for the iPhone, go get your Star Wars on)

Given all the hype these past couple of weeks -- heck, these past couple of years -- you probably don't need much introduction to Spore, so we'll keep it quick. Spore is a game about evolution that works via a little intelligent design: you start out as a helpless, single-cell organism and work your way up the food chain. On the console and PC versions of the game, this eventually leads you to intergalactic conquest.

In Spore Origins for the iPhone ($9.99 at iTunes), that process is scaled back quite a bit. Over the course of 30 levels you stay pretty much at the single-cell level, adding various eyeballs, feelers, spikes, and the like as you tilt your way through the primordial sea, gobbling up smaller creatures and avoiding the larger ones.

We at TiPb have been waiting for Spore ever since it was announced. Heck, we were hoping it would come to the iPhone well before that. Does it live up to our expectations? Read on...