5 games you might be interested in if you can’t wait for No Man’s Sky

3. Spore (2008)

Picture Courtesy: fanshare.com

Spore is a game that's hard to categorize into one single genre. It has multiple stages of strategy based gameplay focused on character creation and city building. In my mind, it’s equal parts, Agar.io, Civilisation, Kerbal Space Program and last but not the least, No Man's Sky.

You start as a single celled organism and based on how you develop your species, slowly progress as a fearsome predator or a friendly herbivore. Once out of the water world where the game starts, you gradually evolve towards building a tribe, then a civilisation; right up to where you build a nation complete with vehicles, aircraft and then finally take the final plunge into space with your very own spacecraft.

This space stage of Spore is the only game of its time that comes the closest to No Man's Sky in terms of vastness where you have to upgrade your ship to travel to distant star systems, use black holes to travel to different corners of the Milky Way like galaxy, encounter beings and either work with them or just obliterate them.

The game even lets you colonise planets, hunt for resources and abduct animals or collect plant samples which you can then drop off in different planets in order to grow an ecosystem. You can even start terraforming barren planets to make them habitable, carve rivers, mountains, and lakes and if you’re feeling particularly peachy, change the colour of the atmosphere, water or even the land itself.

The goal for the players in the space stage of Spore is the same as that of No Man's Sky: to reach the centre of the galaxy no matter what stands in your way. It is no easy feat in this game, though, as you have to fight your way into the centre. A good way to go around it is to form alliances with other space-faring alien races who would potentially donate their ships to form your own fleet to fight and explore alongside you.

The Galactic Adventures DLC even allowed the ship’s commander; i.e. the player, to beam down into alien planets to partake in scripted missions for new parts, abilities, and XP.