The Creature Creator packs an incredible amount of power and versatility to it. All you have to do is go to the online Sporepedia to take a gander at the thousands of user-created creatures already made. (EA has been seeding the Creature Creator to outsiders, which explains the large number of creatures.)

One of the really intriguing aspects of Spore is that it is described as sort of a massively multiplayer single-player game. That’s because though you can only play Spore by yourself, the game is always connected online. That means that when you create a creature it gets uploaded to the Sporepedia, where people can find and download it for their own game. Not only that, but in certain stages of Spore the game will go online and pull other user-generated content to help populate the huge galaxy in your game. You can even choose content your friends made, or stuff someone around the world has created.

Making a creature isn’t just about making something that looks unique. How you design your creature can have an effect on the game. There are design tradeoffs depending on which and how many parts you attach. You can check out our 12-minute hands-on demonstration with the Creature Creator to give you an idea of how it works.

While you’ll have to wait for the full game to ship to actually play, the Creature Creator does let you "test drive" your creature, giving you a sense of how it reacts to different emotions like sadness or anger. You can spawn little baby versions to see how cute they are, and there are extensive sharing tools built into the editor so you can email screenshots and upload videos of your creature to YouTube.