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Speaking of evolution, the game tends to throw our traditional understanding of the Darwinian theory of 'survival of the fittest' out the window as you have fair amount of choices to ensure your species survival and dominance in the universe. Having said that, the game design doesn't stray too far from our understanding of evolution and offers the progression stages starting with a single-celled organism all the way to what we may consider peak of a civilization -- space exploration. Starting your journeyYour creature's journey in Spore begins as a humble single-celled organism, whose sole purpose in life is to consume and multiply. Determining your creature's traits at this stage are two main factors -- your dietary preference (plant-eating, carnivore or omnivore) and your survival tactics (aggressive, passive or adaptable). 
This Cell Phase is basically a top-down view of your creature eating and growing on a 2D surface. Since I was an herbivore, I was swimming around looking for plants to chew on. As you eat, a progress bar at the bottom of the screen will track your progress to the next phase. You will have to keep your distance from other carnivores -- since to them, you are on the menu. Occasionally you will discover useful body parts that can be used by you inside the game's editor: such as a spike on your back to hurt those pesky predators. 
Irrespective of the means you choose, the end entails making your creature's DNA complex enough to grow 'legs' and move on to the land above. Before exiting to land and entering the Creature Stage you are given a special ability, to survive in the outside world. I was given the Siren Song, for example. With similar choices offered at the Creature Stage, your main goal is to collect more complex body parts that you will use to enhance your creature through an incredible fun and simple to use tool kit. In this phase, the game will also generate species around you, to balance the ecosystem. The world around you is thus filled with many different creatures; you will also find many dead animals as well as skeletal remains. These skeletal remains can be scourged to discover new parts that can be later used in the editor. Do the danceThe Creature stage of the game ends with the consequence that your creature will emerge as the dominants species in the world, right at the top of the food chain. Since you are the only sentient species on the current planet, the power struggle shifts to intra-species strife for domination or survival. 
At the end of the tribal stage, the biological blue print of your creature will be set in stone and the way forward at this stage is through collection and implementation of various tools that'll lead you through to the civilization stage. The game introduces balance by spawning bigger and stronger creatures around you. I turned into a carnivore after a while by editing and adding a new carnivorous mouth piece. I realized that as an herbivore I was very passive and harmless, hence was hunted quite easily. A few modifications later -- I got me an offensive bite ability as well the ability to sprint -- attributes of my new-found body parts. 
In the creature phase one can earn DNA points by either eradicating other species -- this is done by killing 5-7 members of the species, or by being friendly and impressing 3-5 members of that species. It's your decision, and as you complete the tasks your progress bar grows towards the next Phase. An interesting anecdote: During one of my hunts, I saw a huge herd of creatures running away, after a while I heard a strange noise and before I could comprehend, I saw a giant spaceship looming overhead. I was quite shocked and not knowing the ship's intentions, I fled. The ship started abducting many creatures and after a while, it just flew away. I saw a couple of creatures waving at the ship with gloomy faces, as the ship had abducted one of their own. Every time you are ready to evolve and add new parts to your creature, you have to mate. The creature phase can be quite action-packed if you are a carnivore. After earning a decent amount of DNA points your brain gets bigger and you can now add a member to take along on your adventures. In plain language, you start a pack. You can make allies by singing to others: a small mini-game starts and if you are able to impress, you win an ally. This socialization is not limited to singing and there are other abilities like charm and dance which are earned depending on the body parts you use in the editor. However, a tribe might demand you dance for them to become allies -- whenever one asked me to dance, I eliminated their entire species. I remember earning an achievement (yes the game has achievements) as I eliminated about 20 species to earn DNA points. Once again, at these stages of the game -- starting from your arrival on land to the peak of your civilization, the course of the species is determined mainly by how you use your acquired technology and your social interaction with other species, tribes and civilizations. In the tribal stage your goal is to grow as a tribe and dominate others. You start off by hunting and collecting food. Once you have enough food, you have to produce more babies and increase the size of your tribe. More food leads to more development, which can be used to create tools. These tools can be used for making allies or for eliminating rival tribes. I faced five tribes, I dominated and captured 4 of them and made the last remaining tribe my ally. Every time you eliminate or become allies with a neighboring tribe you receive their tribe Totem to indicate your victory. Once all the tribes have been defeated you get to advance to the Civilization Phase. Civilization is other peopleCivilization Phase can be quite challenging because you have to capture the entire planet. You start off by designing the city, the factories, the houses as well as the combat vehicles. I designed my very own Metal Gear Spore and a Spore 22 Raptor as well as my favorite -- the Sea Santa. These vehicles are necessary to acquire Spice, which is the main currency. Spice can be found gushing out of land and sea. You have to plan out your city, which includes creating a house and factory model in the editor. 
Building a house increases the vehicle cap, while building factories increases the revenue. It's up to you to keep a balance of both and make a profitable empire. Once you have enough resources, you need to start capturing cities. Every new city you capture will unlock a new feature. You will eventually be able to create sea and air vehicles, which are absent at the start. Capturing new cities also unlocks various super weapons including one which nukes all the other cities. The city planning and resource management aspect of the civilization phase is quite addictive; you want to advance fast and nuke even faster. 
At the end of the civilization stage and depending on your choices, your species will now have enough economic and/or muscle power to develop space technology and you set out to find other sentient beings in the vast universe of Spore. It's fairly easy to go from a single-celled organism to a dominant space-fairing species, in a matter of three to four hours. The final frontierThe Space Phase starts off with you building a spaceship. You use the spaceship to scout your planet, learn about the various creatures, and do some simple tasks to get used to the controls and so on. One of the tasks includes tractor-beaming up a creature and bringing him to any of the cities: reminiscent of the time you were the creature. Your progress during the space stage is significantly slowed down; the ultimate goal is to travel to the center of the universe. 
In Space stage you can explore other planets, some of which are created by other users, interact with their creatures and lean more about them. The space phase is vast and you can explore the 500000+ planets in the game's galaxy. A user-created planet and its AI borrows traits off its creator's style of play: if the creator is aggressive, the AI will be aggressive. You can make allies like in the tribal phase or launch an inter-galactic war. The Space Phase is never ending; you can keep exploring deeper and deeper, and keep interacting with the ever increasing world of Spore. 
Up until this point, Spore is dominantly about playing an architect and you'll likely spend the bulk of your time within the cleverly crafted creation tools. Once you enter the space stage however, it begins to feel more like a game and also compels you to drastically rethink your strategy. This brings us to the difficulty balance of the game. 
To test the game mechanics, I experimented with different levels of aggression. One of my creatures was an aggressive carnivore and I found the going got really tough at the civilization stage of the game. Alternatively, I created an herbivore creature that befriended, impressed and bought off others to breeze into the space stage of evolution. Maybe it's just me, but I found that my passive ways forced me to be submissive to the more aggressive species of the universe. With limited military might, our economic dominance at the home planet offered little help to counter the opposing forces of the universe. Running helter-skelter between fighting off raiding space pirates, retaliating against aggressive species, and preventing biological disasters -- my aspiring space marine found little time to do what I wanted -- peacefully explore, colonize and build inter- planetary trade routes. At this stage, you do have a choice to refit or upgrade your spacecraft with more destructive force, but I was disappointed to find myself in a situation where I was forced to take a certain path. A few hiccupsApart from what I think is a skewed game mechanic, the game falls short on a couple of other counts. What I'd have really liked to see is a simple feature called auto-save -- that is not too much to ask for in a game. Although 'death' in the game is of little consequence, an auto-save feature was sorely missed when the game crashed on more than a couple of occasions and I found restarting that stage of evolution all over again. Spore obviously has a save feature; however, the creation tools and the world can be so engaging that you miss to save your game. Some gameplay aspects feel too easy and simple, reaching Armageddon was never so easy, although it's addictive to expand; the civilization phase seems too short. In Space phase, you can't save a game if you are on a planet, one has to exit a solar system to save the game, and the game does not convey as much. Then there is the DRM issue -- you can read about that can of worms here. These are some of the flaws that I hope will be fixed through future patches. The game is well designed with many amusing add-ons. Funny voice effects and amusing antics by the creatures are found throughout the game. The game looks good, for what it sets out to do, and the interface is smooth. Visually, the game looks perfect for its content. A few nifty multiplayer features have also been built into the game, mainly encouraging sharing and flaunting of your creations. While in the creation mode, the game automatically captures frames at each stage and creates an animated forum avatar that'll let you show off how you went from that simple block to the uber-cool space ship. The 'My Collections' feature of the game is a repository of your creations and collection that you can share over the Internet. Additionally, you can create videos of your creature in action and upload it onto YouTube from within the game. I am guessing that there are more features that'll emerge after further exploration and hopefully through updates and patches. As it stands right now, Spore offers a Petri dish, a sandbox, a snow globe -- you can pick your analogy. If you are looking for deep strategic options, you'll find this game wanting. For those who enjoy building things, the game will offer you endless hours of fun (unless the dreaded DRM decides otherwise) and take you back to the days of playing with Lego blocks and play-dough. If you are looking from more 'traditional' form of game play, skip directly to the space exploration stage where creation takes a back seat in the game. Overall, the game is quite satisfying and we urge all with a curious mind to take a shot at Spore.
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