Single-player plus massive community. Spore is a self-centered game at heart. This is your personal universe to build and change any way you want. At any given time, you’re the only one playing--all in-game creatures are controlled by your Mac.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s a single-player game. Extensive networking features retrieve player-created content from other gamers’ universes, sloshing it around until it washes up on your shores. By default, nearly everything that you don’t create will come from those other gamers--friends or strangers. Ambient life forms, distant aliens, buildings, vehicles, and even whole planets will be delivered into your universe. You can favor certain friends, subscribing to all of their newly created content, or block this feature entirely if you’re feeling overwhelmed.

Wright showed off a spaceship, chuckling about its player-created design. He said, “This happens to be a four-poster bed. You get some weird content in this game. Sometimes [the spaceship] is Santa Claus. If I’d said I want this very specifically to be my favorite sci-fi thing… then it’s more likely to be [that].”

Your actions to blow up a planet created by a friend or to wipe out their civilization will only affect your universe (and possibly your friendship). In-game recording tools can capture video of these taunts or other triumphs, even allowing direct YouTube uploads for online bragging rights.

While single-player, Spore is far from solitary. Its massive, SimEverything scale continues to boggle our minds. But it could usher in more than an evolution in how we think about games. We might not look at a mold colony—or star—the same way again.

Phases of Spore

Spore has five distinct phases, so you never get bored.

With its distinct and different phases in the game, Spore is no bore.

Spore’s gigantic scope provides a lot of value. It’s like five or more different games bridged together. While Spore could begin anywhere—and we half-jokingly expect an expansion pack to simulate the Big Bang—it starts with the creation of life on your planet. Its five phases eventually culminate in the colonization of the universe.

Cell Phase
The goal: Eat and evolve
Genre it resembles: Classic arcade
It plays like: Pac-Man without mazes
Total time we’d play before getting bored: 1 hour
Your simple organism pops into existence, and you swim around a 2D view, absorbing protein to grow. It’s a simple outlook at this size, drifting through a primordial bath; your job is to eat or avoid. Eat enough, and discover enough parts to evolve in a creature-building
cut-away, positioning extra tentacles, eyes, and other primitive upgrades. As the organism grows, the camera pulls back to show a wider perspective. That far-away blur of colors initially looks benign. Zoomed back, it sharpens into the hungry eyes of giant creatures.

Creature Phase
The goal: Evolve into the planet’s dominant life form
Genre it resembles: Simulation
It plays like: The Sims with extra tails
Total time we’d play before getting bored: 15 hours
Your organism eventually flops onto land, where you follow a similar mechanic to evolve. This time, the game takes a 3D perspective, where you can run, hop, or gallop in any direction. Avoid bigger enemies, keep eating, find new parts, and evolve. The extensive creature editor can create nearly anything you imagine, including custom colors and Seuss-ian—or Kafka-esque—attributes. Befriend ambient critters to add allies to your evolutionary gang.

Tribal Phase
The goal: Unite or conquer opposing tribes of the same species
Genre it resembles: Real-time strategy plus simulation
It plays like: Age of Empires on a simpler scale
Total time we’d play before getting bored: 10 hours
Once your creature emerges as the planet’s dominant life form, you control a group of them for the first time. Food acts as the key resource, keeping the tribe alive but also allowing for upgrades. With enough food, you can develop tools, like spears to catch more fish and armor to defend against other tribes. Or you can win the opposing tribes over with gifts and entertainment. Dance or destroy: It’s your choice.

Civilization Phase
The goal: Expand your territory to control cities
Genre it resembles: Real-time strategy
It plays like: Command & Conquer on a simpler scale
Total time we’d play before getting bored: 15 hours
The game expands its scope again to show competing civilizations. If you’re playing the phases in a linear progression, your previous actions determine if you’ll initially control a military, religious, or economic society. Militaries wield the most power. Religions convert others with music and propaganda. Economic societies buy (and bribe) everything they encounter. Race to capture Spice Nodes, which drive your economy and allow further expansion. In-city buildings add town attributes. Launch custom-made land, sea, and air vehicles to expand territory and conquer other cities.

Space Phase
The goal: Explore, expand, and prank other planets
Genre it resembles: Real-time strategy with light adventure and role-playing
It plays like: Master of Orion with streamlined controls but millions of planets
Total time we’d play before getting bored: 30 hours
Once your civilization dominates the entire planet, you’ll change scale, launching into space. Again, choose from prebuilt spaceships or design your own. This final section of the game allows for the most open-ended play but also includes an option for the most specific story. Tool around the galaxy visiting primitive planets and building outposts to mine more Spice. Make friends or enemies with other spacefaring cultures. Eventually, you’ll unravel the game’s narrative journey to expand further and uncover the mysteries in the center of the galaxy.

Want more Spore? Check out our interview with Spore Chief Designer Will Wright and Executive Producer Lucy Bradshaw.