History YMMV / Spore

** There's a [[Website/Reddit Reddit]] post on the official fandom Reddit which has a list of challenges you can do that alters the gameplay depending on which challenge you're going for. The list can be found [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Spore/comments/doe5a8/spore_challenges_if_youre_bored_masterlist/ here]].

** A more obscure challenge involving Creature Stage involves an [[EvilEggEater Ovivore]] run, or a run where you complete Creature Stage by eating eggs. Since destroying eggs always rewards the player 25 DNA and the mimimum DNA required to advance towards Tribal Stage is 1,000, the player needs to eat 40 eggs in order to complete the run, and not all nests will have eggs readily available, especially ones by early creatures. Another problem the player must accommodate for is that creatures have a high chance, especially on harder difficulty levels, of becoming permanently hostile when you destroy an egg.

** Due to how the event mechanics work in the Space stage, periodic attacks from enemy empires will occur ''all at once'', across multiple star systems, inevitably requiring players to decide which colonies they can afford to potentially lose. While a fully turreted city can stave off an attack, if you miss the attack and don't wait long enough afterward, you'll have to deal with the colony chewing you out for not showing up. Even allied empires aren't this annoying--you'll get a "you failed missions" relationship ding if their colony is taken but they won't say a word either way.

** Fighting an enemy captain using [[ScaryStingingSwarm Summon Swarm]] without a projectile attack will quickly become the bane of your existence, especially if there are multiples of them, are very tanky, or both.

* SelfImposedChallenge: Try playing the cell and creature stages without eyes.

** Bean is probably the most popular of the Maxis creations, and has been featured in many memes on the subreddit.

* GatewaySeries: Similar to Creator/DougalDixon's [[Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture vari]][[Literature/TheNewDinosaursAnAlternativeEvolution ous]] [[Literature/ManAfterManAnAnthropologyOfTheFuture wo]][[Literature/TheFutureIsWild rks]] and [[Literature/Expedition Darwin IV]], if you find someone on the internet or in real life who is interested in the SpeculativeBiology genre, chances are they first got started with the genre with this game.

** Also, the Tribal Stage can be made ridiculously easy by going social since giving gifts will always bring other tribes to a (temporarily) ambivalent opinion even if said tribe already declared yours their sworn enemy. Bringing their relationship higher then becomes a mere matter of taking at most your entire tribe to perform for them, since enemy tribes are so easily appeased and their opinion of yours will never sour after getting a content face unless you are stupid enough to attack them. Even more so if you have the "Fireworks" special ability, which temporarily raises a tribe's relationship to you to "friend" even if they were your sworn enemy before. Even in the Hard difficulty, if you act immediately you can befriend the newly spawned hostile tribes before anyone actually attacks you; doubly so if you triggered those tribes spawning by gaining 70 food instead of allying the first tribe, as you have the food on hand to immediately pacify them and can just give all 5 tribe members the same instrument.
** The "Fireworks" ability can actually be used as an offensive weapon; attack a tribe, then after a little bit [[ISurrenderSuckers use the "fireworks", and suddenly they are friendly to you and you can finish them off before they know what is happening]].

** The game's use of CopyProtection led to a controversy that overshadowed even the above; on launch, ''Spore'' came packed with the [=SecuROM=] DRM, which demanded constant internet authentication and forbid a single product key from being used in more than three (later five) computers, and software upgrades on a user's machine ''counted as a new computer for the DRM''. To make matters worse, the presence of [=SecuROM=] was not mentioned anywhere in the game's box, manual or EULA. This was met with widespread outrage, and while EA would later release a "de-authorization tool" that would restore a computer "slot" to be used by the DRM, it didn't stop them from being subject to a number of lawsuits and for ''Spore'' to become one of the most pirated videogames of all time, and the most pirated game of 2008. The game would later be distributed through UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} and Website/GogDotCom without [=SecuROM=].

* BizarroEpisode: Clark and Stanely IIII is very different from the other Maxis-created Clark and Stanley adventures due to having been created by a different employee. Unlike them, you actually play as Stanley and the adventure is a fairly straightforward combat-based mission [[SparedByTheAdaptation where Stanley doesn't die in the end]].

* LethalJokeItem: The Shaman Parts, while using up no captain energy, deal much less damage than the energy-guzzling Warrior parts, and only two of them do any damage at all. But the "Summon Swarm" weapon has an interesting quirk. It [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin summons a swarm of bees]] to torture and distract an enemy for several seconds, making the enemy run around screaming in pain. If you use it when the enemy is near lava, he will run around on air unaffected by gravity and fall into the lava when the swarm wears off. Got a high-health enemy you could never beat? Got some lava around? Use the Summon Swarm!

** The game's use of CopyProtection led to a controversy that overshadowed even the above; on launch, ''Spore'' came packed with the [=SecuROM=] DRM, which demanded constant internet authentication and forbid a single project key from being used in more than three (later five) computers, and software upgrades on a user's machine ''counted as a new computer for the DRM''. To make matters worse, the presence of [=SecuROM=] was not mentioned anywhere in the game's box, manual or EULA. This was met with widespread outrage, and while EA would later release a "de-authorization tool" that would restore a computer "slot" to be used by the DRM, it didn't stop them from being subject to a number of lawsuits and for ''Spore'' to become one of the most pirated videogames of all time, and the most pirated game of 2008. The game would later be distributed through UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} and Website/GogDotCom without [=SecuROM=].