Curiosmos is a galactic playground of planet creation and creature evolution

Spore without the boring bits?

Infamous evolutionary flop Spore, for all its flaws, still had a lot of magic to it. It was fun to design your weird creatures, to watch them try to walk, and - in principle - to turn your humble creations into a spacefaring species.

Curiosmos is a very different game, but it has a little of the same appeal. It's a galactic playground in which you smash meteors together to make planets, then tinker with the ecosystems of those planets to make life and watch that life evolve. All while a hungry black hole lingers nearby, eager to consume everything you have created. There's an explanatory video below.

I drew comparisons with Spore, a game which tried to do everything, so I should stress that it doesn't look like you're directly creating the life that can wander about your planets. Instead, you seem to interact with the physics and elements of the solar system. For example, you can drag a cloud around to spread rainwater across the surface of a planet, perhaps turning it into an ocean world or simply making flowers grow.

There's a playfulness to every interaction which I really enjoy. Don't like one of those flowers? Pluck it from the ground and toss it into deep space.

It looks like a delightful playground, but there does seem to be some objectives and story to it. You're guided, somewhat, by a satellite called Curio, who apparently has some plan for dealing with the black hole that wants to devour everything.

There's no release date yet - and a lot of the footage used in the Day Of The Devs video comes from trailers released earlier this year - but you can follow the game on Steam.