Once you pass the initial level of sentience, you’ll move on to the Tribal stage. This is the most painfully boring stage of the lot. This is where evolution ends. You’re given one last chance to alter your creature (Adding hands is a good idea at this stage, so that you creatures can use tools) and then you’re stuck with your monster for the rest of the game. So the Creature Creator lasts approximately 1 to 2 hours before it’s rendered entirely useless other than for cosmetic purposes. Have you asked for your £5 back yet? Do it!

Now the Tribal stage, as with all the other stages, isn’t awful. It’s just incredibly average, tepid, lacking... All those words you dread to hear about a game. As the evolution process filters out, and you’re now left to designing your tribal clothes (Drag and drop various shapes onto your creature) you’re suddenly beginning to feel like this isn’t the game you’d hoped it would be.

The Tribal stage plays like a very dumb version of Command and Conquer. You collect one resource; food, and you use food for everything. Creating new units, building new buildings (Are they made out of food?!) and... Oh wait, that’s it.

New buildings give you new tools, and these fall into two categories: War or Peace. Peace includes musical instruments and War includes weapons. You either kill everyone or make sweet music with everyone. That’s it.

Moving away from this stage, you’re now on to the Civilisation stage, which plays much like the previous stage but made instantly better by the fact you can now create your own buildings and vehicles. These work as brilliantly as the creature creator does, the problem being that you barely ever look at any of them, making it slightly more pointless. Your creatures are now reduced to such a size that you’ll only see them when zoomed completely in, obviously not the wisest of choices.

During this stage you can set up trade routes between cities, collect spice (Which is now your main commodity) or go to war with people. As with every stage previous, it’s incredibly easy and there’s absolutely no scope for tactics or depth. It’s just a case of do or don’t. Even when you die at any particular stage, you’re just brought back to life anyway.

Once you’ve defeated everyone, you’re off into Space... And suddenly, you realise where all the man-hours went into this game.