Evolutionary Levels/Sandbox

Evolution, in reality, is a giant amalgam of changes over time caused by stressors or preferential mutations.

In fiction, it is much more likely to be divided into neat little sections that correspond to various levels. In many cases, there will be a direction that evolution is moving toward, generally ending at Energy Beings or the Ultimate Lifeform.

While it's most common for Goal-Oriented Evolution to overlap with Evolutionary Levels with "[Ultimate Lifeform of some kind] is the next stage of human evolution!" muttered by an Evilutionary Biologist about how humanity has stagnated in the evolutionary pool kind of way, it's still possible to separate them, despite how closely related the two are. Goal-Oriented Evolution, alone, just ends with some sort of supreme being, levels between start and finish un-discussed. Evolutionary Levels, alone, generally has a "next stage" that may include animals that haven't "improved" by most peoples standards.

When it's one animal, or evolution is more like a metamorphosis, that's Evolution Power-Up. You can move forward and backwards along the various levels with the aid of a Devolution Device (any thing where you can only move backwards because forward won't work because evolution hasn't been decided yet, is likely doing that rare instance of averting Goal-Oriented Evolution).