History VideoGame / Spore

* AbusivePrecursors: It's all too possible to use the Monolith to create new civilizations only to kill them all off later.
** In fact terraforming a planet with rare spice to T3, placing a monolith, letting it evolve to Space stage, then killing them off gives you ''more'' cities and is usually ''cheaper'' than just placing colonies.

* AliensAreBastards: Some empires in the Space Stage can be like this, most notably the [[KnightTemplar Zealots]]. You can choose this path as well! All it takes is one [[EarthShatteringKaboom Planet Buster]] and bam! You're the most hated being within a radius of twenty parsecs!

* AliensStealCattle: Or whatever the local wildlife may happen to be; it's more or less the only way to fill out newly-terraformed planets' ecosystems.

* ColonyDrop: The asteroid call tool can be used for more than just terraforming: it can also be used to devastate cities.

* NotTheIntendedUse: The Warrior's Raider Rally ability is not particularly useful for conquering other planets since the pirates it summons are merely a minor distraction at best. However, if one of your own planets is under attack, it will instantly stop raids from other pirates or enemy empires, and your pirates won't attack you. In addition, players tend to summon pirates just to blow them up for money or to speed up getting the Body Guard 5 badge.

** It's also an effective way to grow an ally empire (if you're aming for the "Change Archetype" mission, or you want stronger ally ships in your fleet). Uplift a planet, de-terraform them to T1 or T0 so that they only have one weak city, then pay the ally to capture the planet.

* DudeWheresMyRespect: Averted. Run a mission or two for an alien empire and they'll be happy to form a trade route. Another few and they'll ally themselves with you, and lend you a ship for your allied fleet if you have room.
** Indeed; later on, one can just go straight for alliance with a quick bribe for most empires, right after FirstContact.

* PlayerDataSharing: All of the creatures, spaceships and other content a given player generates can be uploaded to "Sporepedia" and downloaded into another player's game. The result being that Sporepedia has well over 100,000 times the amount of content the game had when it shipped.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/spore_logo2_3598.jpg]]

* SpeculativeDocumentary: The "Xenoplanets" adventures that have been growing in prominence, in which creators can frame their species and/or civilizations as part of a futuristic television show. [[SturgeonsLaw Of course...]]

The ''Spore'' franchise is, at its broadest, an "evolutionary simulator" in which you guide the development of a species from its humble beginnings as a single-celled organism in a tidepool to its ultimate destiny as a spacefaring empire capable of conquering (or [[EarthShatteringKaboom destroying]]) other planets. [[SturgeonsLaw All too often]], one that has unfortunately evolved in the shape of [[VideoGamePerversityPotential a giant penis with legs]].

Almost all content seen in ''Spore'' is developed by its userbase, thanks to the game's ability to automatically upload creations (from cells and creatures to vehicles and spacecraft) to the main ''Spore'' website ("Sporepedia"), and subsequently download those creations to other games. For example, while about 1,700 entities are bundled with the core game disc, Sporepedia hosts ''over 190 million''. SturgeonsLaw very much applies, but that still leaves over 19 ''million'' creations that aren't bad.

** ''Galactic Adventures'' offers some very nice music to use in your adventures, but due to the [[SturgeonsLaw overall quality]] of most adventures, sometimes the music doesn't even belong and will literally drive you nuts.

* EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs: The Maxis-made [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Dino]], which is basically a stegosaur with a warthog head. And as always, you can make more dinosaurs.

* EverythingsBetterWithLlamas: A frequent RunningGag in Maxis games, and ''Spore'' proves no different.
** There is an entire ''GA'' adventure dedicated to acquiring a golden statue of a llama.
** On some planet you can find ''HUGE'' remains, referred by the community as "Hyper Epics", which have suspiciously llama-like skulls.

* TempleOfDoom: The Maxis adventure "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin The Ruins of Doom]]", in which you are dispatched to recover the mythical [[EverythingsBetterWithLlamas Golden Llama]].

* SpeculativeBiology: There's a reason why a big chunk of this game's fanbase are amateur writers of this type. The game's original premise was the creation of alien species, and making them adapt to the environment and evolve into sapient beings. However, it changed direction mid-production, leading to more cartoonish and unrealistic gameplay and art style. Despite all that, that hasn't stop the aforementioned part of the fanbase from reviving the original premise in some form.

** [[RuleOfThree Yet again in the Creature stage]], there are spice geyser, which for animals, are like those carnival rides where you're shot up into the sky and go "WEEEEEE!" In the Civ and Space Stage, they're revealed to be an essential part of the economy on both your planet and the galactic community.

** On some planet you can find ''[[UpToEleven HUGE]]'' remains, referred by the community as "Hyper Epics", which have suspiciously llama-like skulls.

** Pretty much all of the parts in all editors are like this. A special mention should go to the weapon part "[[UpToEleven Goes to 11]]".

** The very moment you ally with [[spoiler:the Grox]], ''every empire in the galaxy'' will know and [[ThisIsUnforgivable react]] [[ThisMeansWar accordingly.]][[note]] it adds a -200 relation modifier to every empire, causing all but your closest allies to declare war. How your allies react depends on how much you spoiled them before making your [[spoiler:Grox]] alliance. This even applies to species ''[[UpToEleven you uplift afterwards]]''.[[/note]]

* SchmuckBait: The "Bad Baby!" Achievement, which required a creation of yours to get banned from the servers. Unsurprisingly, every InternetJerk and their mother created the stuff. It got so bad, ''the achievement was actually deleted''.

* AtlantisIsBoring: Suspected to be one of the reasons for the Aquatic creature option being cut, it was still high on the list of fan demands after the game's launch, though.
** According to Will, the Cambrian Explosion was cut due to bugs and he was looking into possibly putting underwater creatures in through an expansion pack. No such expansion pack was ever made, though.

* NiceHat: Once your creature is sentient, all manner of funky headgear is available for it to wear. If you have ''Galactic Adventures'', you get to play with even more.

** In the Creature stage, only ''your'' Sneak matters; if you have pack members of a species with a lower Sneak level, or no Sneak at all, hostile nests will still leave you alone as long as your Sneak is active.
* {{Antimatter}}: Now available as handy air-to-air missile systems on every solar system near you.

* MamaBear[=/=]ThisIsUnforgivable: Just ''try'' to ally with a species in the Creature Stage after you've killed a baby of the species.
** Or eat an egg for the large DNA bonus.
*** Sometimes friendly species will let you. The way to find out if they will is attack the egg. If they don't react, it's safe. If they become territorial, mad orange face, stop and make friends with them again.

* MetalSlime: Rogue Creatures in the Creature stage. Hard to find and even harder to ally[[note]]or kill, but they're more valuable alive as pack members than dead, due to their high level skills.[[/note]], but will drop 100 DNA once you do.
* MindScrew: Due to the way the creatures you find on planets are often randomized, once in a rare while you may run into a planet that contains the same creatures your race evolved from. While there's no gameplay differences, it can get interesting should you decide to use those creatures to help stabilize T-scores on planets, as well as use a monolith on them.

* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: InUniverse. After completing the mission requiring you to contact [[spoiler:the Grox]], most, if not all, other empires treat the fact that you met [[spoiler:the Grox and lived to tell the tale as this.]]
* MoneySpider: When enemy ships are destroyed in the Space phase, they sometimes drop tokens (shaped like money bags and gold coins) which can be abducted with the Abduction Beam for money. It's never explained exactly why this is, but could probably be {{handwave}}d as salvage which is then sold or as money being carried on the ship when it was destroyed.)
** The first cell dead that has a new part qualifies, as does any alpha creature dead or befriended in the next stage.
* TheMonolith: Featured as a tool to accelerate the development of more primitive species and civilizations. May be a ShoutOut to ''Spore'''s spiritual ancestor, ''VideoGame/SimEarth'', as well.
* MultiMookMelee: The adventure "Infestation", and a a good 75 percent of the Adventures you'll find on the Sporepedia. They get very boring very quickly, though.

* MyopicConqueror: This is a persistent occupational hazard in the later levels, particularly after your civilization develops space travel. As you capture more planets, your colonies becomes increasingly vulnerable to invasions by other empires. And even if you manage to somehow keep the peace, there's always the possibility that your colonies will suffer environmental disasters that render then non-viable.
* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: Aside from the issue of you only having one spaceship while other species have many, there are only a maximum of 9 types of creature per alien planet (while creature stage has a considerably larger number), and alien tribal planets will have all their tribes be the same species, unlike the actual tribe stage in which there are multiple species.

* NukeEm: You get this option if you unlock the Gadget Bomb and ICBM in Civilization. The former does massive damage and can potentially capture a city in one shot, and the latter captures all cities instantly. However, both leave massive rubble that you'll have to rebuild, and using Gadget Bomb will hurt your relationship with other nations.
** By technicality of using nuclear reaction, Anti-Matter Missiles and Bombs count as well. They're, respectively, consumable anti-ship and anti-colony weapons with a lot of power but are expensive to stock up on.
* OhTheHumanity: Come on... blow up the Earth. You know you want to.
* OneManArmy: Played straight during the Cell Stage, and potentially during the Creature and Space stages. You can kill/wipe out a lot of creatures on your own (though you could ally with some too), and any creatures traveling with you will aid you in attacking anything you're fighting.

* OneWorldOrder: The objective of the Civilization stage.
* TheOnlyOne: The player, particularly when [[spoiler:the Grox]] show up for a 20-on-1 furball. Averted in that, instead of succeeding handily, you [[DownerEnding die a lot]]. Your only saving grace is that you respawn, for free, at the last one of your colonies you visited; in fact, it's not uncommon for the respawn video to show you flying into a sky that pieces of your ''previous'' ship are still tumbling out of.
** Alternatively, you can just pick up the Shield upgrade, Mega Bomb the Grox while safe, and then GTFO.

* PacifistRun: It's perfectly possible to get all the way to the space stage without killing anything. This usually requires getting the green card for a stage, however civilization stage throws a bit of a curveball at the player as the blue card (economic) is actually the pacifist choice in that stage, not the green one (religious). Though since no-one is hurt and nothing is damaged through religious conquering (you shut down their entertainment buildings and turrets and preach to them via a hologram, that's about it), you could argue that the green civilization card is no less pacifist than the blue one. ''However'', religious vehicles ''do'' damage and can even destroy other vehicles!
** There's also an achievement, "Pacifist," that you can get by completing the Cell Stage without killing another creature.

* {{Precursors}}: Implied. Someone built the Grox (and were possibly destroyed by them, unfortunately) and left the Staff of Life at the center of the galaxy.

* ProudMerchantRace: Economic civilizations and Trader empires.
* ProudScholarRace: Religious civilizations (who expand through culture rather than economics or warfare), and Scientist empires.
* ProudWarriorRace: Military civilizations, and Warrior and Knight empires. The Zealot may also qualify.
* PoweredArmor: The Zealot parts in the Captain Outfitter.

* RedShirtArmy: There is an achievement in 'Galactic Adventures'' for getting 100 of your crew members killed, which is named Red Shirt.

** With the way the Civilization Stage works in this game, it can be possible for say, a steampunk-esque nation to wipe out a cyberpunk nation, since both of those elements are merely cosmetic choices.
*** Can also happen literally - have just enough vehicles to destroy a city's turrets, and the ''citizens'' will start pelting junk at your forces in defense. That's only if you're attacking with Religious vehicles, however; the citizens can't do a thing to Military vehicles, since they're too busy panicking or dying.

* SamusIsAGirl: During the mating sequences in the Cell and Creature Stages, the specific organism you control is always the one to lay the egg. Admittedly, your creatures could be hermaphroditic/asexual/sex-switching/etc.
** Curiously [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in the transition between the Creature and Tribal Stages. The Chieftain for the Tribal Stage is referred to using male pronouns in the help section, despite explicitly being the same individual you were most recently controlling in the Creature Stage.
* SaveGameLimits: You can't save inside a planet's atmosphere in the Space phase, but this may be due to engine limitations. It's hard to tell.
** It does appear to be ''possible'', since banning a creature while inside a planet's atmosphere (thus causing your game to automatically save and restart) works just fine, and simply teleports you to just outside the atmosphere of that planet. They just don't let you do that in normal circumstances.

* ScaryDogmaticAliens: Empires following the Zealot Archetype are this.

** So much so that they are the most hated archtype in the Space stage simply because, unless you've allied with them, its either PAY US 500,000 SPOREBUCKS! or '''DIE UNBELIEVER!'''

** Also, multiple references to ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' and ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''.
*** To get an idea of how much Maxis ''loves'' these two titles, the cutscene that takes place when your creature becomes sapient mirrors the monkeys in ''2001''. It even plays the ''same music'', for crying out loud. Not to mention that you can place a ''monolith'' to make a creature on a different planet sapient. Hitchhiker references are all around too, most significantly being that [[spoiler: the achievement you get for reaching the center of the galaxy is 42. You obtain an item called the Staff of Life, which has 42 usages.]]

** When you go to war with the Grox, they yell out the word "Exterminate!" in a manner suspiciously similar to [[Series/DoctorWho another infamous cybernetic genocidal menace.]]
*** Their colonies are destroyed via terraforming, [[Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds perhaps by the most simple of creatures]] that go hand in hand with it.
** The Planet Buster description from the manual earlier up on the page directly quotes ''Film/TheFifthElement'' with "BIG BADDA BOOM."
*** The name "Planet Buster" is itself a ShoutOut to ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri''.

** Of course, nobody mentions those non-extremist "Blue" evolutionary choices, which will usually reside into the more "best of both" approach. Traders make alliances based on who's got money and is friendly to them and won't hurt anyone. Bards are the entertainers of the galaxy and do what they can to stay out of trouble. Scientists may be cynical, but they'd rather study about a race rather than kill off a race.
*** Bards are actually ChaoticNeutral to the point of inviting another species over for a party then '''[[IAmAHumanitarian eating them]]''' and even ask the player if they are ready to be eaten as one of their greetings.

--> "There is no purpose. There is no value. There is no point. Life is ridiculous."

* TakeAThirdOption: Don't want to play favorites when two of your allies declare war on each other? Go to whatever planet is calling for help, but don't attack any attacking ships. As long as you're there, the defending empire will still thank you for helping, and as long as you leave the ships alone, the attacking empire won't get upset with you. However, this only works if the defending empire wins.
** Instead of fighting or allying with [[spoiler: the Grox]], raise their approval just high enough so that they’ll be willing to open trade routes with your empire. This will allow you to (eventually) buy all of their systems.
* TakeYourTime: Largely averted with many missions, as they have a timer attached to them, such as "kill 5 infected animals" or "kidnap a citizen from another (usually non-spacefaring) civilization". However, the main story missions such as contacting the Grox, and doing various other things such as collecting spice or colonizing planets, or even going to war with other empires, can be done however fast you want.
** Still played somewhat straight, however: The timer for most missions only starts when you get there. You can jump in and out of a few wormholes and then come back to do the mission.

* TheyKilledKennyAgain: The [[TheChewToy Clark and Stanley]] adventures in the ''Galactic Adventure'' expansion.

* UnusableEnemyEquipment: Mostly averted. Once you conquer or ally with another tribe in the Tribal phase, you get their tools.
** Sadly true for 75% of the cell body parts. Only the most basic of four sets is available for player cells.
*** Again, this can be avoided by activating the Beta Cell Creator, though any cell created on it can't be edited with the normal Cell Editor.
* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: Averted. If a nest of creatures, tribal village, or non-space faring civilization is flown over, the residents will panic and run around. Even using a friendly tool to communicate with them will make some residents panic. Civilization phase races tend to ignore the player, unless the player attacks the city or steals spice.
** An interesting case in Creature and Tribal: If a spaceship appears, your pack/tribe will be the only ones to not run around in terror.

* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: Zealot, Ecologist, and Warrior empires feel this way. Probably the Scientists, too.

** Heck, it's almost enforced by the mechanics of the game - if you wish to colonize a solar system already inhabited by a sentient species, even if it's in a tribal stage of development, the simplest way is to just annihilate them. The humane alternative involves uplifting them to interstellar civilization status using an expensive one use item, negotiating a trade route, and then buying out their home system after the trade route has been in place for long enough to activate that option. And even this method smacks of economic imperialism. Incidentally, if they sell your their last planet, their empire is still wiped out, and the game informs you of it.
*** The best choice is to meet the two halfway. Uplift them to the space stage, then wipe them out and move into the colonies THEY built (and since it's their homeworld, they'll have more then the maximum number of colonies. Though it's not neutral as much as it's outright slave labor.

* AtlantisIsBoring: Suspected to be one of the reasons for the Aquatic creature option being cut, it's still high on the list of fan demands, though.
** According to Will, the Cambrian Explosion was cut due to bugs and he was looking into possibly putting underwater creatures in through an expansion pack.

** ''Spore Creatures'' has Gar'Skuther, AKA "The Infector".

* BoringButPractical: the Return Ticket, the ability you get in the Space Stage for getting at least three green cards during the previous stages. Sure, it's not useful in combat, but when you get lost in the vast expanse of the universe, you need to get back home yesterday or you are running out of fuel...

* TheChewToy: Clark and Stanley in Galactic Adventures. When they die, the player bursts into a dance, followed by the end mission text calling you out for being a JerkAss.

* CircusOfFear: The GA adventure "[[MonsterClown Shenanigan's]] Funhouse", although it's more like a Carnival of Fear.

* CombatTentacles: While the Creature Creator lacks a tentacle part, it is possible to give your creature a facsimile by retaining flagella from the Cell phase

** Of course, with so many stars, it can sometimes be hard to find your destination even though it's nearby. Not helping is the fact that some missions tell you "X Parsecs from star Z" for the location, rather than tell you which star system(the latter case will at least have [[AntiFrustrationFeatures a line extending from the star where you got the mission to the target star)]]

* CopyProtection: The ever-controversial [=SecuROM=]. Oh lord, the ''massive'' flaming that resulted from it being cracked a few days before release... The Steam version, released concurrently, didn't have Securom though.
** EA has released an expansion pack consisting of mechanical parts, available to only those who live in the USA ([[OfferVoidInNebraska except Maine]]) who have bought a bottle of specially marked Dr. Pepper and input the code on the bottom of the lid into the computer. Needless to say, [[SubvertedTrope There Was No Rejoicing]].
** It is available on the internet though. Maxis and EA thankfully didn't take them down, but instead they warned that the pirated version won't allow players to share creations with these parts. They also noted there's a bug in both pirated and non-pirated version that installing them before Galactic Adventures would cause problems to the game.

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: The Trader archetype in space stage literally rubs off in this direction, being that cash infusion allows a player to instantly fill out the progress bar to buy out a planet quickly (with no consequences from other empires) and gives general purchases lower prices, resulting that a trading empire can literally bribe and buyout other empires without much hassle (and in turn, make more money in the long run).
* CosmeticAward: Ranging from "reach the next evolutionary stage" to "conquer stage entirely socially/violently" to "have your pals die an obscene amount of times." There are also more obscure ones (though these can often be viewed through the Achievements section of your Sporepedia) such as finding the Sol system and Earth, [[spoiler:conquering all of the Sol system before receiving the Staff Of Life, and/or destroying Earth with Planet Busters.]] A considerable chunk of gameplay is getting them.
* CoversAlwaysLie: Of all the creatures depicted on the cover of any Spore game disk (minus Darkspore), only ''two'' are actually included: Captain Barbados and the Solotto creature. A few of the others can't even be recreated with the creature editor.
* CreatureBreedingMechanic: With the twist that the player controls a single creature directly. Evolution is the goal in that stage of the game: you hunt around for bones that contain instructions for new body parts, then use acquired evolution points to append selected parts in the next generation of creature. In the space stage, there's also a "creature tweaker" that allows manipulation of any creature found in the game, but this is purely cosmetic with no influence on play.

* CulturedBadass: In the Tribal stage, your tribespeople are equally proficient with weapons and musical instruments.
* CurbStompBattle: Epic vs. you in creature stage.
** Ten religious vehicles vs. small city in Civ stage.

* DamnYouMuscleMemory: If you are doing a creature eradication mission on a planet that also happens to have an artifact, your radar won't differenciate. Consequently, you could end up lasering the artifact if you're not paying attention. This can be avoided by picking up the artifact first (since you're told via a signal coming off of the planet before you enter its atmosphere if it has something special), but if the eradication mission/bio-disaster happens to be on a planet with a space-faring species, they won't appreciate you taking it from them.
* DangerInTheGalacticCore: The galactic core is surrounded by the civilization of the biomechanical AbusivePrecursors the Grox, and reaching the core itself reveals [[spoiler: a wormhole allowing you to make contact with a civilization of more BenevolentPrecursors]].
* DarkerAndEdgier: The [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin appropriately named]], Darkspore. Rather surprising, considering Maxis's preference for family games.

* DarkIsNotEvil: A variety of horrible-looking creatures can be quite friendly and hospitable, and vise-versa.

* DealWithTheDevil: It's the name of the achievement you get if you ally with the Grox.
* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: In the Cell, Creature and Space phases, if your cell, creature or spaceship dies or gets blown up, you just respawn back randomly, at your nest or at your colony you recently visted depending which stage you are on.

** It is possible to modify saved game planets before starting a new game on them using planet scuplting tools, and the developers took measures to ensure that the game would still be playable and relatively bug-free in that state. For instance, if you unify the entire land a la Pangaea, the game is usually programmed to spawn a maximum 4 extra cities on any isolated landmass, but even though there are only 5 cities instead of the usual 10, the progress bar counts each captured city double to make it possible to finish Civilization Stage.

* EasterEgg: At least one of them. You might spot something [[InsignificantLittleBluePlanet very familiar]] in the Space stage...

* EverythingsBetterWithLlamas: Someone at Maxis really loves these too.
** There is even an entire GA adventure dedicated to acquiring a golden statue of a Llama
** on some planet you can find ''[[UpToEleven HUGE]]'' remains of what appears to be a Llama, see "Hyper Epic".
* EverythingsBetterWithPenguins: The [[IncrediblyLamePun Knot the Grawx]]

** The Cell Stage is, as unbelievable as it may sound, [[TruthInTelevision Truth In Videogames]]. There are actual microscopic organisms called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2JnX9Yy-D8 Rotifers]] which can ''absorb'' DNA from other microorganisms, and even have body parts resembling those of Spore cells!

* EyelessFace: You can create a creature without eyes, but without them, you stumble around in the dark.

* FictionalCurrency: The cell and creature stages use DNA points as currency, the tribal stage uses food, and the civilization and space stages use Sporebucks, symbolized with a §.
* FirstTown: Adventure Town for the entire game and for your species' specific game, Vat Tego. Both are literal walks in the park (or town in their case) and provide the most experience you can get for a GA adventure (100 EXP, however all Maxis-made adventures give 100 exp to give fledgling captains a good start before tackling the user made creations).

* FissionMailed: In Galactic Adventures, if the last act in an adventure has no goal, you can win by using the beam-up button, which in other circumstances results in failing the mission. There's even a dialog box that pops up saying you'll lose your progress in the adventure.

* ForcedTutorial: ZigZagged in the Space Stage; you can skip the planet tutorial, but once you leave the atmosphere you have to go through all the tutorial missions up through the one where you meet another alien race. After that, your homeworld will still have tutorial missions for you, but you have to talk to Mission Control and receive them manually if you want to do them, which you don't have to. Galactic Adventures has a few such missions- "Adventure Town" for playing adventures on their own via Quickplay [[SubvertedTrope (Though simply starting the mission and then quitting back to the main menu will unlock Quickplay just the same)]], "Becoming a Space Captain" for playing them in space stage(which is the first adventure you get no matter which empire you get it from--and the only one you can ever get from your empire to boot). The archetype-specific adventures that come with the expansion might also count, as you have to complete them before you get any downloaded missions from any empire of that archetype.
* ForDoomTheBellTolls: Heard every time the Black Cloud civilization power is used. The fact that all it does is shut down turrets and entertainment buildings, it tends to be an anticlimax....unless you have [[ZergRush 20 or 30 vehicles parked nearby.....]]

** Possible, if an empire too weak to do anything to you(or of an archetype that never bothers to attack anyway) declares war on you but you never attack them in response.
** Piss off [[spoiler: The Grox]] enough for them to declare war (which doesn't take much), and this will be your fate unless you manage to erradicate them; you don't get the option to give a peace offering, and no amount of lost colonies will convince them to surrender.

** During the tribal stage, a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-SVINKKwwU bug occasionally manifests itself]] where a member of the tribe (most often the chieftain) cannot move normally; instead, it rockets out ''into space'' and takes at least half a minute to come back down to the ground (if it comes back at all), not having moved horizontally. This makes it impossible to win the tribal stage using the "friendly" method, as the chieftain is needed to befriend other tribes. It looks cool, though.
*** Note that if you wait long enough, the member in question will simply starve to death. The chieftain even respawns in your village.
** Also in the tribal stage, you may encounter a bug that causes the game to freeze in the exact same spot every time. When this happens, the menu can be accessed, but nothing else works. It is suspected that this freeze happens if you evolved while befriending a creature at any point. Unfortunately, if you experience this bug, that entire save is pretty much ruined.

* GameMaker: Galactic Adventures could be likened to UsefulNotes/RPGMaker with the Spore engine.
** Or a third-person action-adventure maker.

* GenderBender: All of the creatures, upon gaining sentience, speak in a male-sounding voice, with female voices only heard from the Economic archetype in the Civilization Stage and as an uncommon colony voice type in the Space Stage. None of the voice options in Adventures later in the game are gendered (instead they're detemined by pitch), and there is no visible distinction between those who lay eggs and those who don't.

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

* GRatedSex: Spore creatures in the Creature phase apparently reproduce by emitting love-hearts and ''dancing'' with their mate. In the Tribal phase, an egg just rolls out of the main hut. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in the manual, in which it is stated that "what happens in there is anyone's guess"

** Downloading Maxis-made adventures outside of the starting 10 is more roundabout than it should be. Instead of them showing up when you search the adventure's name, you'll get a bunch of modified (usually with ''far'' smaller point rewards) versions by random players. To get the Maxis version, you have to download one of these modified versions, pull it up from your Sporpedia, click on the dropdown menu on the top of the image to get the lineage, and then click the download button where it says "Maxis".

* HolyHandGrenade: Shamans appear to be mainly pacifists. However, this does not stop their tools in Galactic Adventures from being weapons that cause extremely CruelAndUnusualDeath.

* InsectoidAliens: It is possible to make these with a recent patch. Even without the patch, you can make a few insect-looking creatures.

* KingOfAllCosmos: [[spoiler: (Steve!)]]

* LethalLavaLand: Easy to make in GA by increasing the planet's temperature.
* LevelGrinding: Galactic Adventures is rather bad about this, mostly because your captain has ten ranks to go up with (in which you earn the chance to get any part with each new rank), and every new rank usually requires roughly double the number of points your earned for the previous rank. This results in most people playing things like Clark & Stanley and other simple easy adventures that tend to only give you 5-30 points in order to rank up to get a new part so that they can play the harder, larger adventures worth 50 or more. Factor this in with the fact that a single captain can't earn the points from the same mission after the first playthrough, and you'll have a bunch of frustration trying to find worthy missions. Fortunately, Maxis seemed to realize this, as most of the Maxis-made adventures are relatively easy and reward 100 points a pop.

* MamaBear[=/=]ThisIsUnforgivable: Just ''try'' to ally with a species in the creature stage after you've killed a baby of the species.

* TheMonolith: Featured as a tool to accelerate the development of more primitive species and civilizations. May be a ShoutOut to Spore's spiritual ancestor, ''VideoGame/SimEarth'', as well.

* MutuallyExclusivePowerups: Both Shaman and Warrior parts will override the base creature attacks (not a problem, since they're both strictly better), and Warrior parts will override Shaman parts (warrior parts deal much more damage than shaman ones, but unlike shaman weapons, cost energy to use). Similarly, Bard and Diplomat parts will override base socialization skills, and Bard will override Diplomat.

* NiceHat: Once your creature is sentient, all manner of funky headgear is available for it to wear. If you have, Galactic Adventures, you get to play with even more.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: During one of the ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken''-designed missions, you have to attend the wedding of a race of pig people, but when you fix someone's car it speeds out of control into the city and runs over the groom. The punishment? ''you take his place.''

* NoDamageRun: There are achievements for completing the creature and tribal stages without dying, "Survivor" and "Watchful Parent."

* OneManArmy: Played straight during the cell stage, and potentially during the creature and space stages. You can kill/wipe out a lot of creatures on your own (though you could ally with some too), and any creatures traveling with you will aid you in attacking anything you're fighting.
** Largely played straight during the space stage. Like the creature stage, you can get allies to travel with you, but you have to wonder why your one spaceship is the only one out of your entire civilization that makes contact with other space civilizations, terraforms, sets up colonies, and attacks planets/defends colonies. Made more egregious by the fact that when attacking other planets (or they invade an ally/one of your planets), they have several ships on that planet, and while at war, they also send spaceships to attack you while traveling their space.

* OurRobotsAreNonstandard: With the most recent patch, you now get robot parts in creature stage.

* PacifistRun: It's perfectly possible to get all the way to the space stage without killing anything. This usually requires getting the green card for a stage, however civilization stage throws a bit of a curveball at the player as the blue card (economic) is actually the pacifist choice in that stage, not the green one (religious). Though since no-one is hurt and nothing is damaged through religious conquering(you shut down their entertainment buildings and turrets and preach to them via a hologram, that's about it), you could argue that the green civilization card is no less pacifist than the blue one. ''However'', religious vehicles ''do'' damage and can even destroy other vehicles!
** There's also an achievement, "Pacifist," that you can get by completing the cell stage without killing another creature.

* PlanetaryNation: This is a requirement to exit the Civilization stage to move onto the Space stage. Same goes for every other galactic empire out there, though they often have more than 1 planet; also Uprisings only happen for entire planets.

** Kind of the whole point in the civilization stage, in which you must conquer the whole planet into a OneWorldOrder for the space stage.
** The game also provides a more literal side of this: during the civilization stage, any city you capture will switch the architectural style over to what you're using (even if the buildings are rubble) as well as the vehicles. In the space stage, you can choose what buildings and vehicles you want for each planet. However, all of the citizens wear the same outfit regardless of what city or colony they come from.

* PlanetaryRomance: You would be surprised at how elaborate some players can be when they create adventures or provide a backstory for a race/captain on the [=SporeWiki=]; the evolutionary stages as tracked in your history can give you a great overview of what happened to get your race from a mess of slime to a spacefaring empire.[[note]]Don't get too attached to this feature in Galactic Adventures, though. There's a bug where, outside of the Maxis mission Concert in the Park, socializing in an Adventure will cause the timeline to become horribly glitchy and scrambled.[[/note]]

* PredatorsAreMean: In the Creature stage, carnivorous creatures are more likely to be hostile or aggressive than herbivores, and the always-aggressive epic creatures are almost always carnivores. The player can, of course, defy the trope by playing a carnivore focused on socializing rather than hunting, though it's very difficult as the only sources of sustenance for a carnivore are corpses, which are very rare, and the very creatures you're trying to befriend.

* PoweredArmor: Captain Outfitter has the Zealot parts

* RedShirtArmy: There is an achievement in Galactic Adventures for getting 100 of your crew members killed, which is named Red Shirt.

* RisingUpTheFoodChainGame: The Cell stage is like this.
* RockBeatsLaser: Averted. Your single spaceship can easily wipe out an entire tribal and even a modern-era civilization, and there's nothing they can do about it. (Played straight, though, with how your relatively young space empire can eventually defeat The Grox.)
** With the way the civilization stage works in this game, it can be possible for say, a steampunk-esque nation to wipe out a cyberpunk nation, since both of those elements are merely cosmetic choices.
*** Can also happen literally - have just enough vehicles to destroy a city's turrets, and the ''citizens'' will start pelting junk at your forces in defence.
*** That's only if you're attacking with Religious vehicles. The citizens can't do a thing to Military vehicles, since they're too busy panicking or dying.
** Also done in an odd fashion in that a tribal phase species, if they arm and deploy all of their tribe members, can take down an Epic creature fairly easily, while Epic creatures are all but entirely impossible to kill in any other phase.
* RPGElements: Featured prominently in Galactic Adventures, where you can raise your ranks by completing adventures, unlocking items each time you progress.

* SamusIsAGirl: During the mating sequences in the Cell and Creature stages, the specific organism you control is always the one to lay the egg. Admittedly, your creatures could be hermaphroditic/asexual/sex-switching/etc.
** Curiously [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in the transition between the Creature and Tribal stages. The Chieftain for the Tribal stage is referred to using male pronouns in the help section, despite explicitly being the same individual you were most recently controlling in the Creature Stage.

* ScunthorpeProblem: In Spore Creatures many words are censored. This includes "whip" and "bush", even though there are creatures called "whipley" and "Bushley".

** If you have Galactic Adventures, go into the creature creator, go to Partial Styles under Paint Mode, and select Details, you'll see a GA button. The one color scheme in that section looks suspiciously like a [[RedShirt Red]] [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Shirt]].

** Galactic Adventures offers some very nice music to use in your adventures, but due to the [[SturgeonsLaw overall quality]] of most adventures, sometimes the music doesn't even belong and will literally drive you nuts.

* SpaceCompression: Either that, or the planets in the Spore-verse are very, very small. Seriously. It's possible to circumnavigate them in less than thirty seconds at sub-light speed in a spaceship, and by scale your cities are as big as Europe. You can't actually put one ''on'' [[EasterEgg Europe]] without it distorting the land under it.

** The planet seems much bigger from ground level (Creature and Tribal stages;) this trope mainly takes effect after you hit Civ.

* StockFootage: GA will always show one of two animations for the "beam down" sequence and the "beam up" sequence. What can make it really jarring, is the fact that some adventures can end with every character being horribly killed... and your captain bursts into a dance while cheering and laughing. Some adventures can even ''lampshade'' this!

* SuperDrowningSkills: Played straight and averted. When you go swimming in the creature phase, a [[BorderPatrol giant sea monster]] will eat you. However, in Galactic Adventures, it's possible for you to ''swim across an entire planet'' if you want to.

* TerrainSculpting: In the space stage, there are numerous tools to modify the shape of any planet you care to visit. However, these are entirely cosmetic and have no tactical or political effects (but using them on a foreign spacefaring planet leads to a relationship penalty). Also, colonies automatically flatten an area around them when placed.

* TheyKilledKennyAgain: The [[MemeticMutation Clark and Stanley]] adventures in the Galactic Adventure expansion.

* WombLevel: One Maxis-made adventure has you shrink and travel into a cell, Literature/MagicSchoolBus style, to learn about protein synthesis.

** Sometimes, weaker animals in the Creature stage may do this to your stronger creature. Also, your creature and packmates may mob a stronger creature, or lure one to your nest for a serious ZergRush.

** Omnivorous cells get this as a special ability later in creature stage.

* VideoGamePerversityPotential: [[FanNickname The community has come to call]] any deliberately obscene creature "[[{{Pun}} sporn]]". Fortunately, there is a function to report and ban any atrocity that you've managed to unwittingly download.
** SchmuckBait: The "Bad Baby!" Achievement, which required a creation of yours to get banned from the servers. Unsurprisingly, every InternetJerk and their mother created the stuff. It got so bad, ''the achievement was actually deleted''.