Aquatic Stage

The Aquatic Stage was not put into the final game. But this does not exclude the possibility of an Expansion pack or patch.

During the SXSW 2007 demo, Will Wright said that the underwater phase was on the verge of being cut out. However, he has also said that, if cut, underwater civilizations would be one of the first things to add via an expansion pack.

Creatures
In the Aquatic stage the creatures were going to be fish, amphibians, and reptiles. The creatures could be covered with tentacles, fins, and other such parts like in the Creature stage. The parts you would put on your creature would affect its personality. For example, if you were to put on a lot of weapon parts, your creature would be aggressive, put on a lot of social parts, and your creature will be friendly. It is unclear if there would be Epic fish, like Epic Creatures in the creature stage. Carnivores, just like in the creature stage, would be able to hunt and kill other fish, while herbivores could eat algae, or plants on the ocean floor such as seaweed. Also, like the current Creature Stage, omnivores could do both.

Terrain
In the aquatic stage, there was planned to be a vast world with giant underwater mountains, deep trenches, underwater plains and hills, and the like. There were also going to be underwater ruins as well.

Underwater Worlds
There was even a proposed underwater world, with an underwater civilization and vast underwater landscapes. Since this stage didn't make it to the full game, these planets did not make it either.

Underwater Civilizations
When Spore was being developed, underwater civilizations were proposed. Whereas in the Tribal stage, you would be able to place your village underwater to start an underwater tribe. In the Civilization stage, you would be able to make underwater cities, that could make submarine-like vehicles. It is unknown if being able to make your spaceship dive underwater was ever proposed. The underwater cities and the idea of villages didn't make it to the full game due to animation problems. You can, with terraforming, put tribes underwater, but they just swim.

Reasons for Taking Out the Aquatic Stage

 * Problems with animation.
 * Problems with navigation.

Interviews
There is an interview with Ocean Quigley, the art director of Spore about the Aquatic stage in the Spore:the Evolution book. Originally, there was going to be an underwater level before you got onto land, a sort of fish level. We even prototyped it, and it was shown in the storyboards at GDC, but ultimately we decided to bail on it. The main reason was navigation. In the Cell game, you were operating in a 2-D space, essentially navigating on a plane. In the Creature game, the ground acts as a plane. But in the underwater game, you were in a volume, where you would have to navigate in 3-D. However, the spore developers failed to notice the you can navigate with the mouse wheel too. So navigation put the kibosh on the underwater game, even though our early prototypes looked pretty nice, with shafts of light spearing through the water and some nice underwater effects. But this was abandoned and now we go directly from the Cell game to the Creature game.