Dwarf Fortress vs Spore
Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf Fortress is one of the most unique and massive fantasy game ever made using only ASCII characters and colors. The game is completely open world in the sense that you are given the freedom to play as an adventurer and set off alone or with other adventurers on an exciting journey above or below ground (or both) to seek glory, fame and riches, or to settle down and help develop your very own dwarven outpost where you can then build a fortress, establish a barony, and in general, order your dwarven subjects around. Aside from the obviously different "art style" used, the freedom of choice, and the amazing amount of details in its gameplay, the game is also unique in its world building. The virtual world created is not only randomly generated with distinct civilizations with detailed histories, hundred of points of interests like towns and caves, as well as a flourishing nature, which includes both flora and fauna.With so many amazing features packaged into a simple-looking game, it is no wonder why Dwarf Fortress is a game that has inspired a wide variety of other modern games, both indie and big triple-A ones, until today. Due to its size, you might feel daunted to dive into a game like this, but once you've learned the basics, you will find yourself fully immersed in this completely open world of symbols and colors.
Spore
Spore is a pretty unique and addictively fun god-mode-like sandbox game where you get to create a whole new world and fill it with your living creations. As a "god", you can play around with the game's five evolutionary stages, from Cell to Space, and grow an entire space-faring civilization from its very simple beginnings as a single-cell organism. Of course, to develop a civlization, you'll need plenty of tools to help them along and Spore gives all of that to you in an easy-to-use format. You can literally customize everything you like in the game ranging from vehicles that your creations will drive or even buildings that your organisms will live in.Although Spore is essentially a single player game - after all, there can only be one almighty god... and that's you! - the world you've created is shared with other players in the game, so your creations can actually explore new planets and maybe even bump into a hostile race which will force them to make the preparations needed to go to war.
Overall, Spore is an amazingly detailed, civilization-building, sandbox game that allows you to micromanange almost everything if you choose to do so, or you could lay down the groundwork and let things unfold by themselves. Best yet, there is no limit as to how many worlds you can create, so unleash your creativity and your godly powers and develop the ultimate civilization today!