Icarus Preview: Torrential storms, forest fires, and an alien planet await prospectors in Dean Hall's new session-based survival title

With Icarus releasing in less than a day, there is palpable excitement among players surrounding the game. Icarus is an ambitious and glorious project. It uses the concept of sessions with its survival genre in an attempt to provide a unique experience for the players. The question therefore is - can it become the next popular survival game?

Icarus is an upcoming cooperative survival game from Dean Hall’s Rocketwerkz. Up to eight players can play together in a single session. Fans of the survival genre will instantly recognize the name Dean Hall. He was behind the hugely popular DayZ where players try to survive through an undead apocalypse in Chernarus.

Icarus, however, is much different from DayZ. The Westworld-esque introductory video, which players have to watch every time they launch the game, is the first indication of the general esthetics and tone of the game.

Introductory Video (Image via Icarus)

Unlike in most other survival games, where players are dropped in the world, players here are bound by a set amount of time. Players get to go down onto the planet to explore it, gather as many resources as possible, and then rush back to their dropship to return to the orbital space station.

If the player is unable to get back to the dropship before the session timer ends, they will permanently lose the character, their progression and tech on Icarus.

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A hands-on preview of prospecting on Icarus

The setting in the game is planet Icarus, a second Earth. The terraforming process on the planet went wrong, and along with it, humanity’s hope of colonizing. The official discussion on the site regarding this states:

When xeno-biologists discovered the cause of the failure – exotic matter – new interest was ignited. Valuable beyond reckoning, these ‘exotics’ unlocked advanced new technologies and sparked an interstellar gold rush.

Players play as prospectors, dropping in onto the hostile planet of Icarus to look for these exotics. They are part of the First Cohort - which is the first chapter of Icarus. Players have to choose Prospects, timed missions, and then fly down to the planet.

The flora and fauna of Icarus starkly resemble that of Earth. Once players find their footing on the surface, the tutorial guides them to the basic things to note and take care of. There are three essential meters to keep track of - hunger, water, and oxygen.

The scariest threat on Icarus is not its wildlife, although they are definitely hard to contend with. The environment makes up for the harshest enemy to survive against. A dynamic weather system with anomalies such as storms can easily blow apart the player’s buildings if they are not sturdy. Storms can even uproot trees.

Lightning (Image via Icarus)

Players can also get hit with lightning. Forest fires are a real possibility and the fire will quickly progress to burn down buildings, and along with it, all the player’s hard work. The player is thus always advised to have a fire-whacker available.

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Surviving on the planet

In the beginning, the tutorial will teach the player to gather resources like sticks and fibers to make a pickaxe, then use that to collect stones by breaking down boulders to make a proper ax. With the ax, trees can be felled and the wood can be used for making buildings.

Cabin in Icarus (Image via Icarus)

As more and more technology is unlocked and resources are gathered, players can craft further items. Crafting will remind one of Rust, but Icarus feels like a much more refined version of the older game.

Once that is done, players have to go out on a hunt. There are different animals present around for players to catch - rabbits, deer and fishes. The threat of wildlife is also ever-present, with lurking wolves and imposing bears. Other biomes like the desert and arctic provide a different variety of lifeforms.

Desert Biome (Image via Icarus)

Although Icarus is described as a second-Earth, its air is not breathable. To survive, players need to collect blue ores called Oxites and derive oxygen from them. As they progress further in each session and up the tiers, more efficient means will open up.

There is also an extensive skill tree that opens up improvements in various areas like Repairing, Tools, etc.

Tech Tree in Icarus (Image via Dean Hall)

The statistics screen includes an in-depth list of details for players to read up on and be wary of, including health and stamina regeneration, exposure resistance, swimming speed and many more. This provides a deeper insight into the different elements that affect the survivability of a player in the wilderness that other survival games usually ignore.

The first Prospect available to players has a time limit of twenty real-world days. This is to provide the player with enough time to get acquainted with the different mechanics that Icarus offers. Players can explore as much as possible and get a hang of things before moving onto harder Prospects with varying objectives and time-limits. There will be about 35 Prospects at launch.

Orbital Space Station (Image via Icarus)

Once the players are finished with the objectives for their current session or the time is almost up, they have to rush back to their dropship. Getting left behind is disastrous as it basically means all the time and effort was for naught. Between each session, nothing other than character progression carries over.

At the space station, players can research and craft advanced tools with exotic resources brought back from the sessions. This will help prepare the players for their next Prospect.

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The Roadmap of Icarus

Icarus was supposed to be released in August this year. It was then pushed back until the end of the year so that the developers could get a little more time to 'give Icarus more love.'

Icarus has had seven Beta weekends since then, focussing on various elements of the game. The Beta weekends introduced the players to different biomes, like the forest, arctic, and desert, new missions, torrential storms, and factions. The factions weekend explored a bit of the political lore behind Icarus, with shadowy greedy corporations and factions to look out for.

Dean Hall has mentioned that The First Cohort is only the first chapter and that the developers already have a number of plans for the future. This would focus on adding more content for the players, fleshing out the lore, newer biomes and more.

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How does Icarus fare?

The mythological character of Icarus is the son of the master craftsman Daedalus. Because of his hubris, he does not listen to the warnings of his father and flies too close to the sun with wings made from feathers and wax. The wax melts and Icarus falls from the sky and drowns in the sea.

The survival game, with Dean Hall's Daedalus at the helm, manages not to make similar errors out of hubris. Make no mistake, Icarus is mightily ambitious. The developer posits the game as 'The Future of Survival.' In the preview of the betas, it does seem there is enough potential in Icarus for it to become so.

Camping (Image via Icarus)

Icarus boasts of gorgeous graphics and picturesque settings that would delight any player who the has the higher-end hardware required to run the game in its full glory. The various little in-depth mechanics provided are sure to delight the survivalists among the players.

2021 already saw a co-operative survival game become hugely popular in Valheim. It remains to be seen if Dean Hall manages to capture the imagination of the players in a similar, if not a better way.