Everything you'll ever need to know about Spore

What: Remember those books where you got to choose the path of the story by flipping between pages? Spore is like that - 'open ended game play'. You create an organism, develop it into a social creature, and then let it loose on the universe. It's like playing Charles Darwin.

When: Tomorrow! It'll be released in shops in Europe and Japan on Friday 5th Sept, and North America will follow on the 7th. If you're superkeen, you can already download a version from EA Games, ready to hit activate on the 5th. But be warned - you'll apparently have to re-download and re-pay after six months.

Where: The full version is a PC Game, simply called Spore. There's a Nintendo DS version, called Spore Creatures, where you'll be kidnapped by a UFO and forced to survive. Spore Origins is for mobile phones like the iPhone, and has you trying to survive as a single celled organism in a tide pool.

There's a Wii version in the pipeline, but it's taking a while because a lot of it is being redesigned to take advantage of the Wiimote. There's also Xbox 360 and PS3 versions somewhere in that same pipeline.

Who: It's been created by Will Wright, who was the original developer behind The Sims and SimCity. He read hundreds of science books before designing Spore, so really knows his stuff. As much as you can do in designing a game about fictional life forces, anyway. EA Games is the gaming company behind it.

Why: It's got cool features - the music played (produced by Brian Eno) will depend on what you choose for your creature. Choose spikes, and you'll get spiky music, choose floaty ribbons and you'll get floaty music.

There's also true control. Although the game is split into 'phases' you have the choice to spend longer in one if you wish, or skip it all together - there'll be no 'I have been on level nine for six months' stuff here.

There's also some fun community features. You can upload your gameplay to the Spore YouTube channel, or you can subscribe to a specific players RSS feed, allowing you to track all that they create.

There's also the Sporepedia, which will track the evolution of your creation, all the obstacles it encounters, as well as a record of the other creatures it comes across during the game.