Hands on with N-Gage Creebies

One of the more intriguing N-Gage games in development we've come across is Creebies, not least because Nokia is pitching it as one of the key titles on its new platform designed to appeal to women.

We had a hands-on play with the current version of the game at Nokia's Lapland N-Gage event last week and although it's still a work-in-progress, it's shaping up to be as innovative as the publisher promised.

It's being developed by UK firm Gameware, who you might know from the Creatures series of games on PC.

You start by creating a Creebie, choosing from four species. Drasticus Creebies are more physical, Amiabus more social, Sharpus are more intellectual, while Normalus are the most balanced individuals, displaying traits from all of those characteristics.

Each species then has four sub-breeds, with their own unique abilities. Give your Creebie a name, and you're ready to start (you're not restricted to just one in the game, mind, so you'll be able to test out all the different species while playing).

The interface is interesting – you don't control a Creebie directly, but instead interact with the world via a floating hand (if you've played Black & White on PC, this may seem familiar), which you use to click on objects and locations. It's a pretty intuitive control method.

So what do you do with your Creebies? Well, you can buy them stuff such as food, but also items, with the latter having an effect on their skills. For example, we bought our Creebie a stamp collection, which when dropped next to him made him sit down and study it, with his intelligence rising accordingly.

You buy all this stuff with the in-game currency, 'Spondoolies', which can also be spent on furniture and decorating your Creebies' homes. That's where the Animal Crossing dynamic comes in – you can jazz up each Creebie's house to your heart's content, although we didn't get a chance to try this out in our preview.

Spondoolies can also be won by playing mini-games in the world, such as shaking a money tree, or playing shuffleboard and whack-a-monster games (we tried the first two, and they were simple one-thumb games – nothing too challenging, but fitting in well with the overall experience).

It's at this point where we started to see Creebies not as a traditional mobile game, but more akin to the kind of online virtual worlds aimed at kids and teens. You know, Club Penguin, Neopets and Webkinz, for example.

There was also a Stadium in our Creebies world, offering three more mini-games, including our favourite: a surprisingly addictive one-button hurdles race. Do well, and you earn more of those Spondoolies.

Something we didn't have time to actually test is the interaction between Creebies once you have a few roaming your world. Apparently, they'll get on or take a dislike to each other depending on their species and characteristics.

If they really like each other, they'll get together and have a baby Creebie, with something called Mobile DNA determining the child's characteristics. There's clearly scope for some depth here, as you work towards spawning a Super Creebie.

Connectivity will also play a part, via both Bluetooth and N-Gage Arena. The Bluetooth mode involves a 'Multiplayer Common' which one player creates and then others within range can join.

Each participant will be able to send one Creebie at a time to the Common, where they'll compete in mini-game competitions called things like Throbbing Brain, and Sex Appeal. Oh, and there's a wrestling arena, too.

Meanwhile, connecting to N-Gage Arena will give access to the same competitions, just over the network, as well as various league tables of Creebies. Neither feature was available in the preview build we played, however, so we haven't actually tested them.

We said Creebies was intriguing, and our hands-on play has only confirmed that. But intriguing in a good way, thankfully: the game may have its clear influences on DS and the web, but it's a step on from the virtual pet games we've seen on mobile.

We're not so sure that adults will be gathering round in the workplace to fire up a Multiplayer Common and have Creebies interacting with each other, mind. The game will clearly have strong appeal for teens and we can't but wonder how popular the high-end N-Gage handsets are amongst that age-group.

It's one to ponder, but for now we're eagerly awaiting the final version of Creebies. Click 'Track It!' for an alert when we review it.