Spore vs Ylands
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!
Ylands
Ylands is a sandbox adventure game that has a gameplay that's a lot like a massively expanded version of Minecraft with a lot more resources for you to gather, items to craft, and amazing things to build. Instead of being "just a game", Ylands is more like a platform, much like Roblox is, where players are given the tools to create whatever worlds or games they like, be it a fun go-kart racing game that's inspired from Lega Racers or even a watery world where epic pirate-themed naval battles can take place. The worlds are completely interactive as well and every action you do will modify, no matter how slightly, the game environment of that segment of the world you happen to be in. In fact, if you change a terrain and populate it with an entirely different diversity of flora and fauna, you can basically change the climate system there.Unlike Minecraft though, Ylands has opted for a more polygonal appearance which gave it the extra leverage it needed to overcome the painful dismissal and degratory label of being simply a "Minecraft clone" - which admittedly, Ylands is most definitely not. The game has so much going for it and players truly have all the freedom within the game's pretty wide parameters to literally create anything they like. Of course, the game also supports sharing, so you can let other players in Yland enjoy that (for example) crazy maze-running game you've just made!
Ylands is most certainly impressive to say the least. However, due to its indie origins, not many players know about the game, let alone buy it on Steam. So, if you really like Minecraft-like sandbox games, you simply must give this game a try, and if you've had a great time there, be sure to recommend it to your friends or even buy it for them as their Christmas/ birthday gift!