In Pictures: Creature creations

Electronic Arts has released the Spore Creature Creator, to allow gamers to build life forms for the hotly anticipated game Spore.

The online �life simulation� game is due for release later this year and is the brainchild of Sims creator Will Wright.

In the game players control the evolution of a species from unicellular organism to intelligent creatures capable of space exploration.

Gamers can customise almost any feature of the game � including buildings, characters and vehicles � using editing software.

Creature Creator is the first editor for the game to be released. Artificial Intelligence automatically works out how creations move.

More than 250,000 creatures have already been built with gamers sharing their creations online through the Sporepedia website.

The free software is available for both PC and Mac. A paid-for version gives gamers more body parts to play with.

Spore will hit shelves on 5 September in Europe and 7 September elsewhere. It will run on PCs, Macs, mobiles and the Nintendo DS.