Spore

Lately I have been looking at the game Spore, a game by Will Wright, who is famous for such games as The Sims. I found it very interesting how the game changes itself entirely depending on what stage in the evolutionary cycle you are at. When you first start the game, you are given the task of choosing the appearance and characteristics of your entity, as your entity evolves, it becomes more complex and starts to form a colony, so the game shifts stance to being more focussed on controlling a small group of entities, and then through further evolution you are given the task of controlling an entire race of what you initially created. Finally, at the space stage, you start to explore other worlds with your race of beings, dominate or make friends with other civilizations.

I like the way that they have thought about this game, starting from the universe and zooming in as much as they can, so you have to interact with things on the microscopic scale, eventually zooming out to a global, and universal scale. Also, the controls are different depending on what stage you are at, starting at very basic controls of your entity at the initial phase, and eventually leading onto control of your entire world.