In recognition of World Earth Day which takes place each year at the end of April, Slug Disco, Stray Fawn, & Mechanistry are once again hosting an event (Date: April 2026 – exact period tbc) celebrating the beauty of our green planet, and the marvellous diversity of life as we see it and as we imagine it.
Each year we choose a selection of games with nature or eco-dystopian themes.
Nature games have a primary theme – whether narrative or mechanical – that focuses on nature at its best, as it is seen or imagined. As examples, games focusing on the lives of animals or plants, farming, the intricacies of evolution, or the delicate balance of an ecosystem would suit this category. They inspire awe and encourage us to protect the environment that we all depend upon.
Eco-dystopian games on the other hand may have themes of pollution, climate change, overpopulation, and conflict, where the well-being of nature is far from guaranteed. Post-apocalyptic or other dystopian settings would work here. They offer a glimpse of the dire possibilities that show how much we’d miss our natural world if we lost it forever.
If you’d like to submit your game you can do so via this Google Form.
Earth Appreciation Festival 2025 Recap
The 2025 edition of the Earth Appreciation Festival saw over 500 game applications with around 170 games taking part in the event. The event page itself was visited more than 3.3 million times thanks to featuring on the front page of Steam during the event.
You can check out the 2025 edition of the event here:
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/EarthAppreciationFestival2025
2025 was also the first time we ran the Earth Appreciation Festival Showcase, which saw news and announcements from 29 games. The games included in the showcase were also featured separately on the event page for added visibility!
Over $5,000 raised FOR CHARITY!
Thanks to the generosity of participating developers and their communities, last year’s Earth Appreciation Festival raised over $5,000 for various environmental causes.
For Earth Appreciation Festival 2025, we partnered with Cool Earth, a charity protecting rainforests and fighting climate change by supporting the communities that call them home. For 2026, we’re taking this partnership further with Cool Earth as the Official Charity Partner of the event.
Cool Earth will work with their streamer network to raise funds through “Stream For Cool Earth” – you can learn more about them here.
For games selected for Earth Appreciation Festival 2026, there’ll be opportunities to provide keys for the initiative, which Cool Earth will distribute to their streaming community.
Cool Earth has been collaborating with the game industry for a long time:
- In 2024 they collaborated with Genshin Impact to raise over £50,000 to support their work to protect rainforests. Cool Earth worked with creators such as F.ukoro, with over 9 million followers on Tiktok, to promote the game and the collaboration
- In 2019 they took part in Love Tropics, a Minecraft Charity Livestream Event, raising over $63,000 for Cool Earth.
- In December 2024, they took part in Jingle Jam, raising over £250,000 and working with over 30 creators, including larger creators The Yogscast (7.1 million YT, 953,600 Twitch), Cydrose (32k Twitch), and smaller, but equally impactful cosy creators, such as notbella (2.3k Twitch).
If you have a game that fits the bill for inclusion in the event, then here is the form one last time.
For more information and if you have any questions about the festival, please email eaf@slugdisco.com
