The Stages

Once you complete a stage, you can start a new game there, rather than at the beginning of time. Just indicate which trait you want to use.

Cell

A meteor slams into a planet, setting in motion evolution. As a single-celled creature, gobble up meat or plant matter — or both — while avoiding larger organisms. The DNA points you accumulate allow you to modify your cell after clicking the Mating Call button and finding your mate. The parts you can add to your cell depend on what you collected by finding meteor shards and devouring other cells. Offensive and defensive parts are available.

Creature

Crawl onto land to begin the next stage. In the beginning, you’ll roam the planet solo, befriending or attacking other creatures depending on your choice of social or combat stance when approaching them. Ally with or defeat a certain number of other creatures to complete a goal and earn a new body part, which you can add to your creature by returning to your nest and clicking on your mate.

You also gain new consequence abilities, depending on the way you played during the previous stage:

Tribe

Your creatures build a fire and huddle around it, creating a tribe that’s just one of several on the planet. Kill nearby creatures, or go fishing, to accumulate food, which you spend on huts that dispense weapons, musical instruments, and healing rods. As your tribe conquers others through socialization or combat, it grows in size. Your chieftain, who leads all friendly interactions with other tribes, can be equipped with better outfits that increase his combat ability and other skills.

How you played the previous stages dictates the two consequence abilities you can use this time:

Civilization

Your village is now a city, but other members of your species have founded their own cities that you must bring under control via military, religious, or economic means. Spice geysers provide the SPOREbucks you need to build houses, entertainment centers, and factories, as well as air, sea, and land vehicles. Trade relationships with other cities enable you to eventually purchase them while religious vehicles bombard the opposition into giving up by lowering their happiness and displaying fear-inducing holographic images.

You now earn three consequence abilities:

Space

The final frontier. You build your spaceship and head toward planetary orbit. Zoom out your perspective and you can see your local solar system. Move out further and the entire galaxy comes into view. There’s a lot to explore.

First, however, you must establish a colony on another world. It will produce the spice you need to fund your imperial endeavors. While the colony starts working, visit nearby solar systems and see what their planets have to offer. Scan their inhabitants to add them to your SPOREpedia and abduct specimens to bring home. If you encounter another empire, decide whether you want to take them over through military or economic means. Don’t be surprised if another race attacks your colonies while you’re not paying attention.

Your home planet will send you on missions, and you can accept tasks from other empires if you want to establish a friendly relationship with them; all jobs earn you badges that unlock weapons, tools, and other items. During your journeys, you’ll sometimes come across artifacts, some of which are part of collections that you can complete to earn special badges for unlocking even more cool stuff.

You now have four consequence abilities:

In addition, the sum of your playing style during the previous four stages dictates a trait that gives you a fifth consequence ability for the Space stage. If you encounter an empire with a different trait, however, you can adopt it.

• The appendages, weapons, and defenses you give your fledgling organism as it evolves will carry over to the creature stage, where you have one last chance to tweak your species’ appearance to your liking before it’s set in stone for the rest of the game. It’s wise to give your creature arms as soon as you can.

Creature Stage

• Look for other creatures with similar attributes, whether you want to fight them or socialize. Those with higher health points likely have higher levels of singing, dancing, and other social abilities, so you probably won’t be able to earn any DNA points by becoming their allies, because you won’t be able to mimic their moves.
• However, you can typically fight more powerful creatures if you come at them with a larger force. For example, three creatures with 20 health points each should be able to defeat one defender with 40 health points, unless some of its kin are nearby and decide to join the fight.

• Don’t stray too far offshore or you may get a nasty surprise: enormous predators lurk in the depths. During the creature, tribe, and civilization stages, you may also come across epic creatures wandering the planet. Engage them at your own risk.

Tribe Stage

• Only your chieftain can perform social interactions with other tribes, although members of his tribe can tag along, in case the situation goes awry.
• You can steal food from other tribes, but make your raiding party small, equip it with weapons first, and wait until the village is unattended or nearly empty. Don’t forget to take the food left behind by a vanquished tribe.

• When at war with another tribe, watch for members who leave to gather food. Usually they’ll depart in groups of two or three and will often stray far from home, giving you the perfect opportunity to isolate and attack them. Then attack their village before they can breed new members.

Civilization Stage

• Your only means of capturing cities on other continents is by attacking with air or sea vehicles. A new city gives you more capacity for production, but if you find yourself maxed out and would like to move land vehicles from one continent to another, select a group of them in the fleet list and click the red “X” in any of those boxes. That will allow you to delete those vehicles, earning you back half the SPOREbucks you originally spent on them. Then you can create new land vehicles at another city.

• Don’t forget to defend your spice geysers; other cities will attack them. Keep a few vehicles stationed nearby and order them to stand their ground.

Space Stage

• Manage your relationships with other empires carefully. Even the most aggressive empires won’t be able to simply fly around the galaxy pounding other planets into submission as soon as they enter this stage. You should woo other empires first, even if you want to destroy them later. Just realize that the simple act of ignoring them for a while can make them angry.
• If your relationship with another empire turns sour, don’t visit one of their planets and fly over their cities. That will just upset them even more.

• Don’t forget to visit your colonies every so often to collect their spice revenues. Colonies are also a good place to refuel during long interstellar voyages, which require trips between stars, rather than a direct route across the galaxy.
• When you come across planets where the inhabitants haven’t evolved beyond the tribal or civilization stages yet, stop by and say hello. Use the Monolith tool to nudge their development, as in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and they will become your allies as soon as they reach the space stage. No wooing required.