been running this old game again and i think it was worth to mention it in the forum, specially seeing that its getting close to 10 years since its release.
so, for those that dont know it (or in the rare, very rare case that it was forgotten).
SPORE is supposed to be a Life Simulation-style adventure game (calling it a Life Simulator is a matter of debate, mostly for those that know the development history of this game). in the game you start from a humble cell brought by an asteroid into an habitable planet and and climb throught five stages from cell/fish to land creature to tribal society to civilization and then to space empire. each way you play on each stage will have permanent effects on the next one with several end game archetypes for spacefaring races depending on your decisions.
the game's main hook however is that allows players to design almost everything in the galaxy (flora not counting, unfortunately). you can create from cells to buildings and spaceships, and even customize your race's clothing at the different civilized stages, with the Galatic Adventures expansion you can also make a personal space captain and design planets for making customized adventures (player designed missions basically). all this can be shared on a global collection in the game's website (which is still running) and you can too download player created content to add into your personal collection.
the game uses all these assets as they are added, making the galaxy much less "generic", if you want to look it like that.
the game was made by Maxis and published by EA so you can expect a lot of stuff was cut out or sold as "expansions" (too short, should be taken as DLC instead). but the game is still recommended to play, mostly because no other game has tried to go into this lvl of player derived content (its not mandatory anyways, there's a large collection of prefabs to choose from in the base game, but you would be missing on a lot of fun trying to make your own stuff).
for those wondering, yes, the game is in Steam too. and mods are a plenty (they're also easy to install).
anyways, i leave the thread open for discussion in case of questions about it or if you want to show some media of your own shenanigans with the game. i dont think there's a recent thread about it and dont want to do necromancy.