Recruit the best warriors from across the galaxy to build your creature arsenal and collect hundreds of distinctive creature characters, each with their own unique abilities, to wield as your living weapons. Take direct control of your creatures as they descend to the surface of infected planets to battle hordes of enemies and drive back the forces of Darkspore.

Your enemies are diverse and dangerous — in order to defeat them you will need to employ the full range of your creature arsenal and strategically decide which creatures to deploy for each battle.

Collect new weapons and armor to augment your creatures' abilities and turn them into a more powerful fighting force. Use the award-winning Spore Creature Editor to customize your own unique creature characters, and trade with other players to complete your arsenal.

Play through the epic sci-fi campaign solo or co-operatively, join forces with friends to take on the forces of Darkspore, or battle your friends head-to-head in fast-paced competitive arena battles.

Now through Friday of this week, get and play the free Darkspore beta on Steam. Also, Steam announces an exclusive pre-purchase offer: a four-pack of Darkspore for the price of three.

Prospective gamers can experience Darkspore early by jumping into the new closed beta, which opens today at 3pm PT and lasts through Friday, April 1 at 12pm PT. The beta is available exclusively on Steam [click here to download the Beta, or click here to download Steam]. Following the simple instructions there, players will be battling the Darkspore with up to 4 people in co-op and enjoying the intense 1v1 or 2v2 PvP action the game has to offer in no time!

Key Features:

• Collect an arsenal of hundreds of different creatures and wield them as your living weapons
• Choose strategically which creatures to send into battle against the forces of Darkspore
• Combat hordes of infected enemies and massive bosses in fast-paced, intense action
• Join Forces, trade or compete with up to three other players in co-op campaign mode or up to eight other players in PvP mode
• Expand the Universe with DLC to unlock rare creatures, new planets and new features