Creature

The term "creature" in Spore refers to the organism controlled by the player. The term is most of all relevant to the creature phase, because that is the phase where the player controls a single creature. The creature begins as a micro-organism (microbe), however.

Microbe


In the tide pool phase, the player interacts with the world with a microbe. The objective here is to consume food until the microbe "lays an egg". The player can then click the egg and then you can give different abilities to the cell in the microbe editor by adding parts, ranging from stronger weapons to various forms of movement.

As the generations go on, the cell grows larger and the camera pulls out until the microbe becomes a multi-cellular organism, most often referred to as the creature.

Genetics
Each creature will have its own set of genetics, which is (in practical terms) the procedural code compressed to a small size which generates the 3D creature on a player's machine. It is unclear whether a creature's genetics can be manipulated purely through editing the genetics code, rather than through the creature editor, which would be comparable to editing the data file of the creature instead of using the editor.

Creature size
Creature sizes can be adjusted by the player. Will Wright has previously suggested that the largest size will be elephant size and the smallest will be hamster size.

Land
All of the creatures possible in Spore (with the exception of those in the Cell Stage) are land-dwelling.

Amphibious
There has been no official word on amphibious creatures, but provided aquatic creatures cannot be played, it might not be possible for a creature to live both on land and in water.

Aquatic
Aquatic creatures are now confirmed as having been cut from the game.

Flying
Although confirmed by Will Wright in a Gaming Steve interview, the mechanics of flight in the game is not yet known. A flying species cannot build flying cities. However, according to various sources, flying creatures make land-based cities.

In the GDC 2005 presentation about Spore you can see a little creature flying away from behind a rock after the Willosaur escaped from the spidery creature and Will Wright says "...on the other hand this guy is kinda fast...", talking about his tripod. Also, a more defined bird-creature can be seen in the presentation as the Willosaur emerges from the water and onto land, the bird is seen on top of a tree and flies across to reappear again to fly above another tree and into the distance.

According to Gamespot it was seemingly impossible to create a flying creature during the E3 playable demo of the Create a Creature system.

There have been no sightings of player-controlled or in-editor flying creatures so far. There has been no reference to flying creatures since the 2005 interview, so it is possible that flying creatures may not make it into the game, or at least not in the initial release.

During his podcast, Gaming Steve stated that when he placed wings on his creature, the stats that increased were senses; so it seems that, in a Dumbo-like way, that wings are just oversized ears. On the GamingSteve Spore forum, Steve said that the creature sort of hovered instead of flew. This leads to two possibilities:
 * 1) The "wings" were too small to lift Steve's creature.
 * 2) In the game, the further you click to move your creature, the higher it flies; so, assumingly, short distances would only need very weak hops, similar to some real birds on Earth.

In a demonstration at Gadgetoff 2007, Will Wright created a winged-creature in the creature editor. Despite having large wings relative to its body size which displayed some functionality once in the game world, i.e. they flapped as the creature walked, the creature did not ever take flight. 

However an article published on the 13th of February 2008 at bit-tech.net claimed that placing wings on a creature would allow it to take flight.

It is impossible to conclusively test out flight in the stand-alone creature creator, as there is no preview button for flight, such as the ones that exist for Punch or Hippity Hop (dance). The closest it comes is the creature stats panel, that will list flight as an ability beside Sight and Hearing if wings exist, though it cannot be tested. '''A similar ability to flight, the glide ability, can however be tested by pressing the corresponding button within the Creature Creator build mode. For creatures with a glide stat of 4 or below, this produces the same effect as the jump ability, but for creatures with a glide of 5, the action will actually take the creature off the top of the screen for a moment. How this will correspond to a possible flight mechanic in-game is yet to be determined.'''

Subterranean
Nothing is known about this and will likely not be a feature in the game.

Arboreal
Nothing is known about this and will likely not be a feature in the game. Although in the creature editor, wood, and leaf-like textures could be seen. However, in the later game there will be a chance to use the plant editor, allowing the player to create custom foliage.

Rolling or slithering
In an interview with Jonathan Coulton, Chaim Gingold confirmed that a creature with no "parts" could still survive and move, albeit as a small blob. This implies that slithering snakelike creatures are also possible. Blob creatures have also featured in a number of videos.