malymin

I've thought a bit about the "pitiful worm" run of Spore - a challenge where you spend the entire game as a limbless worm, with an un-evolved mouth and no other parts. The pitiful worm challenge hilights aspects of spore's mechanics that are easy to ignore if you're able to optimize your creature.

I'm imagining a run that lets you have more power, but within a limit. You're only allowed to use mouth, foot, and hands that are part of "matching" sets in the game's internal filenames. In a sense, parts that belong to a single "clade." No weapon tab parts, no detail tab parts. Eyes (which only grant sight) and ears/noses/antennae (which are purely aesthetic) from the "senses" tab are allowed to give aesthetic leeway, unless you want to be really strict.

As soon as you give up your cell mouth and "basic" hands/feet, you are locked into your clade. You can't swap between different sets of mouth, hand, and feet as you evolve, even if you unlock access to those other part families. Instead, you must upgrade (or, if you wish, downgrade) your parts within the "clade" of choice throughout creature stage, and upwards into every subsequent stage. In addition, you must complete the premade Galactic Adventures... uh, adventures, with a captain of the species.

If your clade doesn't give you good combat abilities and you want a "red" creature stage card, you must compensate and strategize in a similar way to the Pitiful Worm - ditto if you aren't granted social abilities and want a "green" creature card. If you are used to using specific abilities to navigate adventures - such as poison spit or flight - that you cannot access, you must either change your strategy or invest in a captain equipment part that replicates it.

Now, the thing is, there's only two sets (not counting C&C or BP) of full "matching" anatomy, at least internal names wise.

One of these is a primate set:

	Core Offense	Core Social	Third Active	Health	Speed
	Bite	Sing	Charge		(N/A)
ce_mouth_primate_omnivore_01	1	1	-	-
ce_mouth_primate_omnivore_02	2	2	-	-
ce_mouth_primate_omnivore_03	3	3	-	-
ce_mouth_primate_omnivore_04	4	4	-	-
	Strike	Pose	(N/A)		(N/A)
ce_grasper_primate_01-symmetric	1	1		-
ce_grasper_primate_02-symmetric	1	2		-
ce_grasper_primate_03-symmetric	2	3		-
ce_grasper_primate_04-symmetric	3	4		-
	Charge	Dance	Sneak		(Feet only)
ce_movement_primate_01-symmetric	-	2	2	-	1
ce_movement_primate_03-symmetric	-	3	3	-	2
ce_movement_primate_02-symmetric	-	4	4	-	3
ce_movement_primate_04-symmetric	-	5	5	-	4

The other is an **amphibian** set:

	Core Offense	Core Social	Third Active	Health	Speed
	Bite	Sing	Charge		(N/A)
ce_mouth_amphibian_omnivore_01	1	2	-	-
ce_mouth_amphibian_omnivore_02	1	3	-	-
ce_mouth_amphibian_omnivore_03	1	4	-	-
ce_mouth_amphibian_omnivore_04	1	5	-	-
	Strike	Pose	(N/A)		(N/A)
ce_grasper_amphibian_01-symmetric	-	2		-
ce_grasper_amphibian_02-symmetric	-	3		-
ce_grasper_amphibian_03-symmetric	-	4		-
ce_grasper_amphibian_04-symmetric	-	5		-
	Charge	Dance	Jump		(Feet only)
ce_movement_primate_01-symmetric	-	1	2	-	1
ce_movement_primate_03-symmetric	-	2	3	-	2
ce_movement_primate_02-symmetric	-	3	4	-	3
ce_movement_primate_04-symmetric	-	4	5	-	4

These are the sets that are most obviously viable for this hypothetical challenge. I think they'd both be interesting. The amphibian set has no combat abilities (other than the minimum of 1 bite that all mouths get), but is highly social and gets the best jump in the game. (It's actually a viable strategy to befriend socially-weak offensively-strong creatures and sic them on whoever you want to kill, even if normal play makes just beefing yourself up easy. This is a common way to get red or blue consequence cards for creature stage in pitiful worm runs.) The primate set is balanced, with a lean towards socializing, but lacks some *very useful* abilities (especially in adventures) like jumping and sprinting.