The Earth Appreciation Festival is a Steam showcase with the goal of celebrating the beauty and remarkable diversity of our Earth with a selection of over 170 games. This year is their fifth year, and this year the organisers — Slug Disco, Stray Fawn and Mechanistry — have partnered with the charity Cool Earth. Developers, studios and content creators are colectively raising money through Cool Earth to fight the climate crisis.
When it comes to 170 games, this might be far too many for you to sift through yourself. So, we’ve selected a handful of games from the Earth Appreciation Festival to help you, and we’ve included links to our own coverage if you’d like to learn a little more.
Rain World
“Rain World is, bear with me here, like a snake cube. That’s right, the little wooden puzzle bricks held together with elastic. (If you don’t know them, these) Both of them are made of humble material, they both look simple to process and complete, when you see somebody doing it correctly it looks majestic, but when you get stuck, and just can’t do it, it seems impossible, implausible, and even, a big, old waste of time.”
Coral Island
“Coral Island is another slice of life, farming simulator. This time, though, you’ll be exploring a seaside island, full of different people, animals, and things to do! After moving to this town to look after a massive plot of land, you get to spend your days doing whatever you want.”
Empires of the Undergrowth
“It’s hard not to fall in love with Empires of the Undergrowth. With so much content due to be presented in such an excellent form, its eventual public release will be something to count down the days toward. At the time of writing, that deadline isn’t concrete, so we’ll be waiting with baited breath all the while.”
Faceminer
“Faceminer does a couple of things different to its contemporaries. For a start, you receive goofy emails and it has an amazing soundtrack, however, critically, it comes with both story mode and infinite mode, which gives you a few dozen hours more gameplay than your run of the mill incremental experience.”
Faceminer is an incremental twist on training facial recognition software
Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley
“I would recommend this special game in a heartbeat to anyone. Its prescience, its warmth and its curiosity win out above the slight repetition, and it coalesces in this beautiful little slice of game which really makes you want to go out, chew a bit of grass and lay back in the sun with a harmonica.”
Frostpunk 2
“Frostpunk 2 is a bold, brutal sequel that expands its predecessor’s systems without losing its soul. It’s colder, yes — but also deeper. More political and more personal — it;s a game that asks not just how you’ll survive, but what kind of world you’ll build in the aftermath. The only thing is, if you’re not careful, it’ll remind you that even the warmest intentions can freeze over.”
Frostpunk 2 expands macro-survival into post-apocalyptic civilization builder
Timberborn
“Timberborn is already a very well-made colony-simulator/city-builder. Few games have given me the feeling that I felt as I pulled off a new dam design, or as I noticed that trees had repopulated large strips of the world due to the new waterways that I’d created. I’m excited to see future factions, mechanics, tweaks and updates, and to give the map creator tool a decent go.”
Timberborn challenges you to build a beaver society in a post-human world.
Out and About
“Out and About feels very relaxing and the real-life tips are ones that you can learn from! This small town feels homely and quirky, with enough people to keep you interested in what is going on. The game is free flowing enough to just explore or cook food that you want to cook. It’s a fun time!”
Prehistoric Kingdom
“Prehistoric Kingdom is the prehistoric park builder we’ve been waiting for. Forget the Jurassic franchise, cursed to follow in the footsteps of the films’ scientific inaccuracies. Forget trying to get the prehistoric DLC for one of the Zoo Tycoon games working on a modern PC. This is a strong park builder with gorgeous graphics depicting prehistoric animals in all their sometimes-feathery glory.”
The Wandering Village
“There’s that moment that happens in movies set in alien or surreal settings where the characters settle or hide on a rock or shelf of land and it suddenly rises up and reveals itself to be a massive, often harmless, beast. The Wandering Village puts you on the back of that beast, trying to survive in a world that’s becoming increasingly hostile.”
Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge
“Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge reminds me of a more fleshed out version of Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector, but with a bit more depth and meaning to it. In Kamaeru, you must bring frogs to your frogland, so that they can rest and gather some tasty bugs for you, but at the same time you’re also developing wetlands!”
There are obviously tons of other games as well in the Earth Appreciation Festival, but hopefully this list helps you find some fantastic gems. These games are featured until April 24th, so there is plenty of time to pick them up.
