From tomorrow computer gamers will be enticed with a novel and somewhat foreboding prospect: would they like to play God?

One of the most anticipated games in the history of the industry, Spore, gives players the chance to simulate the entirety of evolution from the first, single-cell amoeba to the human colonisation of space.

The game, which has been in gestation for seven years and was created by the developer of the Sims franchise, will attempt to convert a new generation of gamers, including older people and younger children.

It is also a watershed moment for its publisher, Electronic Arts (EA), which has sunk an estimated $75 million (£43 million) into the project.

Spore is set across five stages, starting at the beginning of life where the player sets forth as a single-cell organism. After feeding on other sea-life, a player’s creature gradually pulls itself out of the primordial swamp, adds limbs and other body parts and meets other fantastical creatures to form tribes and later city populations.

Having managed issues such as tax, traffic control and religion, the player blasts off into space - the final and longest section of the game - to colonise other galaxies, form trade routes or wage war with alien populations.

Will Wright, the game’s creator, said that his inspiration for Spore was evolutionary biology and that he worked with several scientists to figure out “which 20 per cent” of evolutionary theory would be “cool and fun for a game”.

Other scientists are impressed.

Thomas Near, an assistant professor of biology at Yale, told The New York Times that the game would do much to promote a greater understanding of evolutionary theory: “If people who played could end up thinking about it the same way they think about gravity, that would be great.”

Mr Wright said that he did expect to “hit hot buttons” among Creationists in the American religious community because of the evolutionary focus of the game but so far there had not been any criticism.

He said that he “didn’t want to go too far down that path. We leave the whole ‘creation of the universe’ question open.”

It is the creative technology behind the game – that players are given tools with which they can fashion creatures that in turn can be uploaded on to websites and shared with other players - which the company and analysts say will be its unique feature.

“Spore is a grand design of unprecedented ambition and we’re already seeing a number of its ideas about internet integration filtering through to other developers,” said Tom Bramwell, editor of Eurogamer.net, a gaming website.

One piece of software EA released in June that allows would-be players to fashion their own creatures has already been downloaded three million times.

Sporewill retail at £39.99 and will initially be available only for PC and Mac, though versions for the Nintendo Wii, DS and mobile phones are in the pipeline.

According to Screen Digest more than ten million PC games will be sold in Britain this year, bringing in an estimated £150 million.

Early reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. In a review in TheKnowledge today The Times gives the game five stars. Games Radar, a popular gaming site, described it as “a gorgeous, whimsical, accessible diversion” and one US-based analyst has predicted that it will sell two million copies by the end of the year.

However, not everybody believes Spore will be that successful. Mr Bramwell said he thought it would sell well to core gamers but that he did not expect it to have the same commercial success as theThe Sims because “it has less broad appeal than making a family home and buying accessories”.

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