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Eco

$29.99
Release Date:
Developer:
Strange Loop Games
Publisher:
Strange Loop Games
Platforms:
Windows
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About This Game


Enter the world of Eco, a fully simulated ecosystem bustling with thousands of growing plants and animals living their lives. Build, harvest, and take resources from an environment where your every action affects the world around you. An imminent meteor strike threatens global destruction. Can you save the world without destroying it in the process?



Construct buildings and towns, tend to your farm, hunt wildlife, build infrastructure and transportation, craft clothing, build power plants, and research new technologies. Specialize in a craft and trade your goods to other players. Develop your civilization and sculpt your planet.



As your civilization grows, you’ll need to analyze data from the simulation; evaluating the impact you have on your world. Use this data as evidence in proposed laws, restricting harmful activities without disrupting the advancement of technology. Balance your individual needs with the needs of community, all while maintaining the state of the ecosystem. The future of your world is in your hands.


Every organism in Eco exists as part of a detailed simulation; a disruption in one species can have cascading effects across the planet. Chop down all the trees, and habitats for creatures will be destroyed. Pollute the rivers with mining waste, and your farms will become poisoned and die. The ecosystem supplies the resources you and your community will need to stop the meteor. Manage your pollution, mining waste, hunting, and resource collection to balance your effect on this system.



Eco is built on a rich ecological simulation. All the data generated from the interaction of plants, animals, climate, and players can be searched and analyzed using in-game graphs and heat-maps. Use the collected information as scientific evidence support to proposed laws. The ability to successfully debate using scientific evidence is your greatest weapon against the destruction of your world.



Establish and maintain your own set of laws and government, which are enforced automatically by the game. Draft a proposal to limit clear-cutting in a protected forest, incentivize green energy solutions over fossil fuels by providing tax subsidies and penalties. Participate in elections for world leadership, allowing you to set tax rates and allocate community money. Use a programmable law system to make dynamic and flexible rules for the community, passing them by vote. Construct a wide variety of governments; from tightly-regulated dictator-states, to tax-and-spend subsidy programs, or even lawless communities relying on trust.



Your skills increase based on your food and shelter. By consuming a highly nutritious variety of food and building an elaborate home you will rapidly increase your skill points. Skill points can be spent on skills like farming, hunting, trade, engineering, research, and more. Contribute to the greater good while increasing your own personal success.



In the player-run economy, you achieve the most when you specialize and trade both goods and services. Create stores to buy and sell goods you need asynchronously with other players. Setup contracts within the game’s quest-like labor market, soliciting other players to perform specialized work for you in exchange for payment. Build complex crafting machines and charge a fee for players to use them. A thriving economy in Eco can be both a powerful tool for progress, or a dangerous threat to the environment.

To grease the wheels of commerce, you can create your own currencies, backed by fiat or by resources. Manage the value of your currency relative to others by setting exchange rates at asynchronous currency exchanges. Sell items at stores and collect credit from other players. Eco is designed for rich asynchronous play, allowing many players of many disciplines to contribute to one another’s goals at separate or simultaneous times.



All of the world’s resources originate from its environment, which is affected by your actions. While a meteor looms over head — set to strike the planet in thirty days — a more subtle threat grows from player-interaction with the environment. Without careful attention, ecological destruction can destroy civilization before the meteor even strikes. To ultimately succeed, you and your community will need to use the tools of government and economy to find a balance between progress and protection.

Included Features
  • Online Multiplayer - Collaborate online with a community of players.
  • Local Singleplayer - Build your own world, with the option to invite friends.
  • Dedicated Server Included - Host your own Eco worlds.
  • Over 30 different craft tables, with hundreds of recipes.
  • Hundreds of items, skills, craft tables, and building blocks.
  • A simulated ecosystem with dozens of unique species.
  • With limited carrying capacity, players must create vehicles and networks of roads to transport materials.
  • Create your own backed or fiat currencies, using them as a means of exchange in the economy.
  • Build stores where you can sell your excess items for a profit.
  • Eat varied and nutritious food and build ever larger homes to increase your skills.
  • Create contracts for jobs that you would like players with different skill-specialties to accomplish for you. Take on contracts from other players that need the skills you possess.
  • Design laws using programmable template system to protect your world or increase your profits, enforced by the game if ratified by the population.
  • Run for election and make decisions that affect the globe.
  • View and compile rich data from the simulation and use it to argue for group decisions.
  • Claim land as your own property, and share access rights.
  • Give and remove reputation from other players.
  • Find a balance between progress and protection, between individual needs and those of the group, succeeding or failing together.


Eco is our forever project. We plan to keep growing, expanding, and improving it with the support of the community. Follow our plans and progress through the Eco Tree, which displays in-depth details on current and future features. The Eco Tree can be found on Eco's official website.

Screenshots

User Reviews

Mostly Positive
43 user reviews
72%
Positive
56 min at review
Not Recommended

Doesn't work at all, impossible to join friends, crashes the moment it finishes loading.

7 helpful
1 hrs at review
Not Recommended

Unable to play with group of friends which was the first reason we bought the game : crash upon loading the world for some, unable to join via Steam for others. Issue has been mentioned several times on the net for 3 years, in early access for more than 7 years, yada, yada, yada.... Product refunded.

6 helpful
3 hrs at review
Not Recommended

***WARNING*** This game is not compatible with Starlink internet.... You cannot play online with Starlink.... Only single player.... I bought it for myself and a bunch of friends and had to get refunds on all copies which was just a hassle....

6 helpful 2 funny
2,471 hrs at review
Not Recommended

✅ English – Social-Media-Post Title: My experience with ECO – and why I can’t recommend it I bought ECO because the concept sounds amazing: build a sustainable world together, create politics, manage economy. Sounds like a dream for simulation fans, right? The reality? Unfortunately, more like a nightmare: ❌ Support is basically non-existent. Questions on the official Discord often remain unanswered. You rely entirely on other players. ❌ Language: In German, the game is a weird mix of English and German (Denglisch). In 2025, with AI tools available, there’s no excuse for this. ❌ Server administration: A horror show. Without excellent English skills and a lot of patience, you’re lost. Documentation is incomplete, and many mechanics are outdated or poorly explained. I’ve tried setting up a server to match what the game promises – and failed so far. Bottom line: Great idea, poor execution. ECO will never break out of its niche this way. I can’t recommend buying...

3 helpful
3,784 hrs at review
Recommended

My wife and I played Eco in March of 2019 during ver 0.8 and have continued to return to it every few months when we get the itch to help save the world. In the past 6 years of development the game has changed not only in complexity but also in community. Eco was my Covid game and I have roughly 3700 hours played in the game (not held on the loading screen). Everyone's experience with this game will be different from one person to the next and you'll end up meeting a plethora of interesting and unique real life people. Just to highlight some of my experiences I got to help a town with a group of German friends without knowing any German. I got to have a conversation with a gentleman from Japan using signs and an online translator. I've helped create thriving economies, tribunal governments, industrial powerhouses and I've even been just a humble farmer. As of the time of this review the game is in Early Access, however I salute the developers for what they have created and will creat...

3 helpful
1 hrs at review
Not Recommended

keeps crashing, can't even join friends on their game properly

3 helpful
125 hrs at review
Recommended

Eco is truly amazing… It’s pretty deep, and you can see where the devs are trying to model systems that work IRL. While I’m still but a noob, the server I’m on is quite nice, all players are helpful. Simulating an economy with free markets and only a handful of players is going to be *really* challenging, and can’t really ever mimic real life… I’ve seen comments about monopolies… etc. Not run into that myself… Sold my first research papers tonight, and I botched it up… didn’t calculate the price correctly, and lost one of the papers. The veteran player didn’t complain… and paid for *my* mistakes. Of course, tomorrow, I’m going to reach out and transfer some in-game currency to correct the mistake. Just like you might do in real life. What’s fascinating for me right now is in realizing how *calories* seem to be the crucial factor… it’s not that you have to focus on it… you just keep yourself fed, but when it really comes down to it, during ...

3 helpful
98 hrs at review
Recommended

Absolutely great game, so full of potential i cant wait for further updates

3 helpful
412 hrs at review
Recommended

this game is so badly underrated we could add alot of stuff mods and other stuff

2 helpful
240 hrs at review
Not Recommended

Their changes with the latest beta patch are some of the dumbest things imaginable. More importantly, their design's so flawed they're using mods on their official test server to make it less horrible. Don't buy this steaming pile.

1 helpful

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System Requirements

Minimum

Minimum:
  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 10 64-Bit or newer
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1500X 3.5 GHz Quad-Core or Intel i5-6500 3.2 GHz Quad-Core or similar
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 290 or NVIDIA GTX 970 or similar (Minimum: 4 GB VRAM)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 6 GB available space
  • Sound Card: DirectX®-Compatible
  • Additional Notes: Translations included in the game are made by our community on Crowdin, only the english language is official and made by us. Only languages that cover at least 80% of the strings in acceptable quality are marked as available here on Steam, but there are more than these available in the game.

Recommended

Recommended:
  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 10 64-Bit or newer
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz Eight-Core or Intel Core i7 9700K 3.6 GHz Eight-Core or similar
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 5700 or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 or similar (Recommended: 8 GB VRAM)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 10 GB available space
  • Sound Card: DirectX®-Compatible

FAQ

How much does Eco cost?

Eco costs $29.99.

What are the system requirements for Eco?

Minimum: Minimum: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 64-Bit or newer Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1500X 3.5 GHz Quad-Core or Intel i5-6500 3.2 GHz Quad-Core or similar Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 290 or NVIDIA GTX 970 or similar (Minimum: 4 GB VRAM) DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 6 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX®-Compatible Additional Notes: Translations included in the game are made by our community on Crowdin, only the english language is official and made by us. Only languages that cover at least 80% of the strings in acceptable quality are marked as available here on Steam, but there are more than these available in the game. Recommended: Recommended: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 64-Bit or newer Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz Eight-Core or Intel Core i7 9700K 3.6 GHz Eight-Core or similar Memory: 16 GB RAM Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 5700 or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 or similar (Recommended: 8 GB VRAM) DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 10 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX®-Compatible

What platforms is Eco available on?

Eco is available on Windows PC.

Is Eco worth buying?

Eco has 72% positive reviews from 43 players.

When was Eco released?

Eco was released on Feb 6, 2018.

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