In what is surely an industry first, Maxis has released a number of early prototype games for those interested in the development phase of Spore, the recently released life simulator.

The prototypes range from star formation to simple OpenGL-based creature games.

“One of the ways in which we explore possible design directions is by building simple, playable prototypes that we can play around with to get a sense for a particular system,” reads a statement on the developer’s website. “Usually these prototypes are never seen by the public, but we thought some of the more intrepid players out there might enjoy playing around with a few of our early Spore prototypes.”

Interested users can head over to this page, which also provides a short description for each prototype.