A  recent post emerged over at the official DarkSpore forums with DarkSpore Level Designer MaxisMaverick sharing some insight on the level design.  Jump over to the thread or you can read what he had to say below:

No doubt you look forward to making your creatures cool. When I played Spore I loved the creature stage most. But I equally enjoyed exploring every nook and cranny to discover all the different creatures, try to befriend them and then when I screwed that up, execute them with my adorable little claw monster. I wanted to play with my creation. This is probably why working on levels for Darkspore has been a really interesting treat.

When you build a PVE level for an action/RPG you are basically creating trip from point A to point B. You make sure you have cool battlefields, interesting routes to explore and cool little places to hide collectibles or health. The sad part is that once you get to point B you’ve been there, done that and you know what to expect the next time you come through. The surprise of seeing something new fades and enjoyment begins to come from mastery and familiarity much like you get from your favorite PVP map.

In Darkspore, however, there is a magical happy place in between familiarity and surprise due to the way our levels load. Our maps themselves are much like a painter’s canvas. They come in different shapes and sizes but it’s the way the paint goes on that determines the feeling the viewer gets. Similarly, here, I design multiple strategies for the different elements that come into play. Each of these elements shape the way the level plays just slightly.

When you drop down to the planet the game pulls one of my designs for collectibles, one of the layouts for dangerous objects, another setup for the health power-ups, then one of my configurations for tactical environmental objects, and so on and so forth for all the elements the given level needs. The first twenty times I play the level the specific combination I get is a surprise even to me. I feel like these worlds pay a compliment the uniqueness of your particular heroes and how you pair them together by being slightly different every time you visit them. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I am.