Eco on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Build a civilization of real people, working together to advance society and stop a meteor, all without destroying the ecosystem in the process.
Eco is a early access, simulation and building game
developed and published by Strange Loop Games.
Released on February 06th 2018 is available only on Windows
in 10 languages: English, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Spanish - Spain, French, Portuguese - Brazil, Korean, Russian, German and Spanish - Latin America.
It has received 13,212 reviews of which 10,744 were positive and 2,468 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.0 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 28.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Eco into these genres:
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 11 64-Bit
- 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
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Better than Minecraft. This game is criminally underrated — with the right marketing and a more active dev team, it could easily put Minecraft to shame. ECO is so unique that it’s almost impossible to capture its magic in words; you really have to experience it yourself. Just don’t play it solo — that’s a completely different (and honestly much weaker) experience. The real magic happens when you dive in with a community of friends, building, managing, and shaping the world together. ECO isn’t just another survival crafting game, it’s a social experiment wrapped in a sandbox — and it’s unlike anything else out there.
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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 create with this project. They have put in massive amounts of work to get the game to the state that it currently is in and will never take away their accomplishments but without any further ado what i like about the game. Eco is a social game depending upon the difficulty that is set at world creation. You can play by yourself and do every profession in the game or you can play with a bunch of people and only have access to 2 or 3 professions. This concept of collaboration is where Eco shines the most. Meeting new and interesting people that you get to chat with while you're building a house, collecting resources, or setting up your shop. In the course of playing Eco I've learned about economic concepts like how currency works, what makes currency valuable, how currency can motivate people to do and the dangers of having too much or too little in circulation. Eco's system of government and laws will help anyone who is learning about logic statements in computer programming. I learned about If this than this statements, how to put conditions that trigger during certain events and I also was able to break a server for 12 hours because of a faulty logic statement (never do laws when you're sleepy). Oh the memories of fun times. Eco can also teach patience while you're waiting for someone to gain enough experience to gain their next star so a new technology can be unlocked. In the meantime you could then expand the roads out from a town to start making it easier for resources to be gathered. The possibilities are endless. Now for the bad stuff. If you've made it this far I congratulate you. Here is the part of the review where I complain about what I do not care for about Eco. The learning curve for Eco is steep and I do not feel that the tutorial covers everything to make someone successful competent on the first playthrough. I admit, I have not tried the new tutorial and with Eco being such a niche game, finding current information on the internet or forums can be a daunting task in and of itself. However I have yet to see anyone in a game tell someone to "get gud" when a question is asked of any community. Not to say that it won't or hasn't happened, I've never witnessed anyone being a gatekeeper when it comes to game mechanics. Modders have exploded the popularity of the game. Nearly every aspect of the game will have a mod available. Want to recycle pollution out of the game? Download this mod. Want to have fancy colored cars? Download this mod. Want to have 13 new skills to the game for whatever reason? We have a mod for that. Modding a game isn't necessarily a bad thing but for me I cannot find a server anymore that does not use 13 mods. Having a filter option would be nice. One of my current gripes about Eco is losing people. When the only brick maker never comes back to the server for whatever reason the game comes to a halt until someone picks up that skill again. I have yet to figure out how to keep people interested in a world when most of the current public servers have stripped out all the reasons to keep people invested in the world. Even the Official Public servers have quite a few people that log in and speedrun progression in 5 days when I still haven't gotten a house built. The repair system was added to Eco very recently as a way to keep beginner professions in demand all the way through end game content. Meaning that equipment can and does break down over time. Everything that is used to make something will, at some point, need to be repaired. I feel that the system needs a rework and perhaps making it a profession all on its own. I may be wrong as I am not a game designer, perhaps I've got too much time sunk into the game without a repair system. With that being said I will give this game the prairie dog out of ten. Definitely a solid game built around core concepts and gameplay loops. I cannot wait to see what the future holds for Eco.
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Alright, listen here, ya bunch of beaver-huggin’ coders — I got a moose knuckle to pick with this game called Eco. Bud, grab your double-double, sit down, and let's talk about this digital tree-huggin’ simulator. Now don’t get me wrong, I like the idea. You start off with nothin’ but your hands and a few wooden tools, like some kinda backwoods lumberjack, and the goal is to build a civilization without destroying the environment, eh? Sounds like something we’d all get behind — especially in Canada where half our national identity is apologizing to trees before we cut ‘em down. But holy smokes, once you get into it, it’s like living inside a bureaucratic nightmare that makes the Canadian Revenue Agency look like a drive-thru at Tim’s. First off, the skill points. What is this, a government grant application? You gotta wait actual real-life hours to learn how to chop better wood. Like, I’m out here felling trees like Paul Bunyan with a limp, and the game’s telling me I need a permit just to make a slightly better axe. Who made this? The ghost of the Ontario Building Code? Then there’s the laws system — oh boy. You wanna mine some coal? Better write a bylaw, get it passed, post it to the legislative board, and pray your four cabin-mates don’t veto it ‘cause “we’re trying to go green.” Meanwhile, I’m just tryna power the sawmill so we don’t all freeze to death when winter hits — but nooo, someone read one too many David Suzuki pamphlets and now I’m the bad guy for wanting to smelt a bit of iron! And let’s talk about pollution. Buddy, I fart once near a tailings pile and suddenly there’s a global crisis. Look, I respect the environment — I recycle, I don’t drive a truck unless it’s hockey season, and I cried during The Lorax — but I breathe near a fish and now it’s belly-up in the lake? Get a grip, game. We’re not running an oil sands up here — it’s one damn kiln! And don’t even get me started on the economy system. You wanna buy a few tomatoes from your neighbour? You better hope you took Advanced Spreadsheets 301 in university, ‘cause you’re about to do more currency conversion than a snowbird flying back from Florida. But the worst part? The comet. The whole time you’re playing this maple syrup-coated municipal simulator, there’s a big ol’ space rock threatening to wipe out all your hard work. So after all the lawmaking, forest preserving, tax setting, and zoning debates, you still might lose it all unless your community comes together and actually does something. Which, let’s be honest, is about as likely as getting Alberta and Quebec to agree on carbon pricing. So yeah, Eco is like living in a co-op with six policy majors, three environmental activists, and one Frenchie from Québec who just wants to mine in peace. It's beautiful, it's frustrating, it's slow as molasses in January… and yet, I keep going back. Because deep down, it's the most Canadian game I've ever played. Just wish it came with a snowplow and a union rep. There ya go. Rant complete. Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go build a compost toilet before someone files a lawsuit over wastewater runoff. TLDR - It is an amazing game. Buy it. In Canadian dollars.
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I was on the fence for recommending or not recommending this game. It's... fine, but a bit grindy and uneventful for gameplay. I last played a while ago though and with the right (large) group of people it's fun, so I give this a pass and recommend it. If you only have a couple people it'll probably feel more of a grind than fun. Basically, the people make the game fun, so it's a bit hard to recommend, but, they are still adding and improving to the game, so I give it the thumbs up.
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Kinda torn between recommending and not recommending the game. The game itself in my opinion is really good and the idea awesome. What makes me question if I should recommend the game is the people playing it (as it is with most games). The game itself is very playable, despite being in early access. The idea of the game is to stop and asteroid from hitting the earth. Meaning you need to progress technology wise fast enough to do so and not destroy the planets ecosystem while doing so. However I have never seen the planets ecosystem been destroyed or even severely damaged as most servers have pretty large maps compared to players playing the game (as most players leave the game pretty early on leaving a handful of players on a huge planet that no matter what they do they can't make that big of an impact as to destroy its ecosystem). If you play on online servers with others, the pattern is pretty much always the same. A ton of people join the server on first two days. On third day about half of them are still playing, on day four about half of those are still active and it keeps going on like that until there a at best a few groups of friends and few solo players left. The problem is that if you don't play with friends whom you can make inside trades and really cooperate in building your community, you will become irrelevant in the progress of the game (which contributes to people leaving). So the players mainly go into three groups of players. There are those that join the servers as a group, and know exactly what to do, and they can pretty much finish the game by themselves. The rest are there just to tag along a few steps behind the entire game. Then there are those that join the game and start demanding everything right away and usually for free or for fraction of the price that the people offering the items are asking for, if they don't get what they want they start flaming until they leave the game. They also tend to start telling people what to do. And then there are those that join the server, try their best to play nice and fair, but ultimately fall short for not being part of that group that makes all the advances far before anyone else and ultimately most of these will also abandon the server after noticing that they play no part in the progress of the game. I have started on like 20 servers, the only game I finished was one with just friends joining in on. And that way the game can be fun and enjoyable. All the other games I either quit as I fell so much behind that there was really nothing to do, or that others left and there were only handful of people left on the server and there for made no sense to continue. Many say that its a cooperative game, and in away i suppose that is so, but I do believe that it's also a competitive game that is just not played correctly. I do think that it should be a competitive game amongst several towns/countries, just as in real life. But sadly most games just end up with one huge blob of people and then few smaller groups that are left without a chance against that one large mass (which will in a few days be only that handful of people that will keep on going). If you play with random people there are very few that actually contribute to your town, but instead go for that personal gain and just picks up the raisins from being a part of a town without actually making any contributions towards it. I think the game really needs npcs or ai of any kind. At least for me who is sick and tired of the community that surrounds the game, and servers dead by the day 10. I would much rather bang my head against the wall with crappy AI rather than online players. The single player is kind of a bore alone, but with npcs i think it would be pretty great and more alive, especially if they knew how to create their own towns/countries, etc. Though I don't think this will be possible anytime soon, or ever.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Eco is currently priced at 28.99€ on Steam.
Eco is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 28.99€ on Steam.
Eco received 10,744 positive votes out of a total of 13,212 achieving a rating of 7.95.
😊
Eco was developed and published by Strange Loop Games.
Eco is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Eco is not playable on MacOS.
Eco is not playable on Linux.
Eco offers both single-player and multi-player modes.
Eco includes Co-op mode where you can team up with friends.
Eco does not currently offer any DLC.
Eco does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Eco does not support Steam Remote Play.
Eco does not currently support Steam Family Sharing.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Eco.
Data sources
The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.
Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 24 October 2025 00:31 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 22 October 2025 02:42 |
| Steam price | 28 October 2025 20:50 |
| Steam reviews | 28 October 2025 11:54 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Eco, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Eco
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Eco concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Eco compatibility
Game modes
Multiplayer
Online players
862
Developer
Strange Loop Games
Publisher
Strange Loop Games
Release
06 Feb 2018
Platforms