Welcome back citizens to the Nero Gaming newsletter.

We’re the arcade game that gives you an extra life without asking for another quarter—you’re welcome!

Here’s what we have for you today:

• How survival game Eco is built different 🌎️ 

• Mount and Blade: Bannerlord community highlights ⚔️ 

• Baldur’s Gate 3 raises the bar for AAA developers (maybe?) 🚀 

Eco Zigs Where Others Zag

First up today we look at a game that marches to the beat of its own drum: Eco.

In many games, you can bring your experience in the general genre (whether that’s survival crafting, city building, 4x … whatever) to the gameplay for a sort of head start.

In a refreshing way, this isn’t really the case with Eco. It stands out with a lot of unique components and novel experiences (which we examine here).

This is a little bit of a longer overview, so here’s a heads up of what we’ll talk about:

• The general premise of Eco

• Specific design choices that make Eco different

• How to determine if Eco is right for you or not

Eco’s general premise…

TL;DR: The premise of Eco is work together to avert destruction (whether by asteroid or ecological disaster) and use a variety of unique game features (including player run governments) to do so.

Eco shares a lot of commonality with many survival crafting games—players can gather resources, unlock tools, level up and build bases.

There’s a few things that stand out in the premise: First, an asteroid is heading towards earth and threatens to annihilate everything. Before it arrives, players must unlock the technology to destroy the asteroid or render it harmless.

The default timeline for this asteroid Armageddon is 30 days—measured in real time. Implied in this doom clock is the game’s real mandate: Work together with other players to progress through the tech tree or you’re all going to die. 

The other real component of Eco that makes it unique is the environmental aspect—the dev’s have gone through extra effort to make the ecosystems fragile.

In other words players can kill the planet themselves before the asteroid does. They can damage the atmosphere via over use of fossil fuels or hunt a valuable species to extinction—and must carefully coordinate efforts not to do so.

This NEED to coordinate, then, is what further drives another of the game’s unique offerings: player run governments (this is a catch-all for many sub features like elections, zoning, currency issuance etc.).

Unique features in Eco…

Alright, alright… Eco is special. But now you want some nitty gritty details—we got you!

Single player isn’t the default (and multiplayer is done well!)

Most importantly—and perhaps obvious by now—Eco is not meant to be played single player. It is POSSIBLE, but you have to go out of your way.

Here’s what the devs have to say on their FAQ page about singleplayer:

Thankfully, the game makes it easy to find and join a multiplayer server—a rare feat in the survival crafting space. We give Eco huge props here.

One more quick note before going further: When joining your first server, a step by step tutorial is available—and it’s really good.

The game is weird, but the tutorial does a good job of helping you navigate the weird—so don’t feel like you need to play alone before joining others online.

Skill tree and leveling up is done very differently

The RPG component of Eco is unusual… and I won’t make an effort to explain the whole thing here. If you want to do a deep dive, I recommend this video.

Here’s two things I will highlight:

First, the “leveling up” doesn’t come from grinding, but from passive EXP accumulation. The RATE at which you passively accumulate experience depends on your “nutrition” which is the built in mechanic that promotes food variety.

Also, this is probably a good time to add that you level up VERY SLOWLY in Eco.

Compared to say, Ark (where you can expect to be Level 10 within an hour of playing) Eco levels are accumulated at a glacial pace. In my most recent game, I didn’t reach Level 2 until IRL day 2.

Another unique approach to leveling is the concept of skillbooks and professions.

In most “professions” you don’t necessarily have prerequisite professions to unlock them—you instead need both a skill point to spend (which comes from leveling up) and a skill scroll for the associated profession.

Why is this important? Stay with me!

The way skill scrolls are obtained is that some player has to craft them in a lower profession—in this way it IS like a prerequisite structure.

However, in a multiplayer game, other players can craft skill scrolls FOR YOU… allowing you to skip some lower tier professions altogether. In other words, SOMEONE has to go through the prereq professions but not EVERYONE has to.

One way this could play out: You could start the game as a hunter, providing valuable calories and nutrition to other players. As farming and other forms of food production take over, you could then level into a high tier of engineering (skipping the mining and masonry professions altogether).

Player run governments + currency issuance

Perhaps the most unique component of the game is the concept of player run governments and player currencies—I wish I had more to say on this topic but, other than voting on a basic constitution, I don’t have any direct experience here.

I DID get to play around on a server that had multiple developing currencies—it was a cool concept and fun to see stores across the server start to aggregate… but nothing incredibly special.

I imagine at their best, these systems can promote robust discussion and a fun experience you just can’t get anywhere else. On the flip side… one of the servers I looked at had a pre-made government and currency in place—which can be a signal that sometimes those features are more headache than their worth.

Is Eco right for you?

I strongly suspect this steam review sums it up perfectly: This game is as good as the people you play with.

I will also say this: If you play Eco to try to have the same fun you have on other open-world survival crafting games… you’ll be disappointed. The graphics suck, the progression is slow and there’s not a single PvE moment to write home about.

Here’s the Imperial recipe for having fun in Eco: Go into this game knowing that the “payoff” takes place over weeks (not hours) and that the best experiences it has to offer are social (not technical).

Hope that helps—happy saving the planet!

Mount and Blade Devs Add “Community Tales”

Taleworlds has begun a new series called “Community Tales” … highlighting art, videos and—most importantly—mods from the Bannerlord community.

Navigating a huge library of mods can be hard—and community tales might be a good place to start.

Their first selection of mods includes one that allows (among other things) peasants to encourage the execution of Lords—particularly disturbing to your noble Emperor.

Quick Hits

Video: Baldurs Gate 3 is Causing Some Developers to Panic

Opinions abound: Did Baldur’s Gate 3 raise the standards for Triple A studios? (This one is spicy!) 🌶️ 🌶️ 

Dev Blog: Space Engineers Automaton Update

In April of this year, Space Engineers released their Automaton update, which unlocks a lot of new automation tools in the sci fi sim. (We promise to give a full review soon!)

Article: Sengoku Dynasty shares its early access roadmap

From the devs: “Our emphasis on ‘Personal Growth’ reflects our intention to deepen character progression with the introduction of perks, status effects, and an exploration of spirituality, giving you more shrine variety and places of power mechanics rework.”

The Emperor’s New Memes