[PC] Icarus

[Cylus Maxii]

I bought in and am enjoying the Icarus Beta. This seems like a sci-fi genre with similar survival crafting gameplay to Valheim. Survival elements include maintaining food, water, body temp and oxygen; not to mention surviving the environment, weather and wildlife.

Premise is making drops to "claims" on a badly terraformed planet that has biomes both familiar and alien. Weather runs in extremes and is very impressive! I have seen lightning strikes start forest fires. You have to make various timed objectives for each extraction. So far - the objectives seem to deal with collecting certain "exotics". I haven't played far enough to finish a mission or find exotics yet, so I can't comment on how it evolves from there. You have the option to extract early and retain your experience - but you will only earn space bux for completions. You will likely have to use that option a few times to get enough survivability to even open enough tech tree to get a good base camp established. The tech tree looks pretty good so far. Some skills are locked by prerequisite skills or level. There is also character development in various perks/traits that buff everything from sneak speed to HP and all the standard sort of stuff.

So far the hunting and building have been pretty fun, the exploration could use more variety and reward. But its only the most basic areas that I've seen thus far.

Each drop starts off without any gear (at least from what I've seen so far) - but their are currently disabled loadout options and slots in your survival suit to fill with equipment that you probably start a drop with. There are about half dozen suit upgrade slots IIRC - dedicated to things like the O2 tank or helmet or gloves. These are presumably crafted at the station between drops and use the earned rewards from completed drops. I know that the deluxe version of the game will include some level of upgraded survival suit.

Also promised, but not yet accessible, will be strongholds/base camps that are persistent places where you can build a longer-term base to your heart's content. In the base game, you will get the alpine/forest biome. In the deluxe version you get the first 2 DLC expansions and two additional base camp/stronghold sites in other biomes.

MP: You can be joined by up to 7 friends, and people can jump in and out, but cannot rejoin if they actually go back to their landing pad and bug out. It looks like any of the players can restart/re-host a session if they are on later and the original host isn't. You can always just leave the game (without extracting) and pick up where you left off later. I guess the MP shared session state is saved on their servers or something.

State of Beta: they are running beta weekends every couple of weeks. The next couple are showing off the Arctic and Desert biomes. Joining games seems to involve inviting a Steam friend to join game lobby if you have started a drop/claim. The in-game ability to invite players is not yet evident.

Icarus is currently scheduled to release on 11/20. And its looking good so far!


EDIT: removed Beta tag from subject since this is now released!

[coopasonic]

This has been released and is looking pretty good so far. My son and I played a few hours yesterday. Enough to do the initial tutorial and the following scan mission and fail horribly at the "hunting" mission that was offered. I was able to get to tier 2 stuff but didn't get to explore it much as bedtime arrived.

Mission Based Survival Crafting is as good as it sounds.

[coopasonic]

Up to 62 hours played... and it is starting to get a bit grindy. I've done a couple mission that require powering items, which requires tier 4 stuff. So much material. It wouldn't be bad if my son hadn't bailed on the game. It's just a lot to do solo. I definitely think it's one of the better co-op survival games, but not too great as a solo game primarily because of how long it takes to move up the tiers for every mission. Yes, you can improve your initial loadout, but that only really protects you from so much (though I will say getting the oxygen tank has been a GREAT investment).

[Cylus Maxii]

I bought this but have not played the release version. We have been running a Conan Server the last month or so. But that has largely run its course, so we'll probably get into this over the holiday break the next week or so. If you see me playing on steam, feel free to message and we can MP.

[Fretmute]

I’m currently doing Payday: Extraction solo, and the grind to get the tier four stuff was nothing compared to waiting for the stupid extractor to do its thing. I’ve leveled from 60 to 66 just sniping wolves while feeding it fuel. What a beat down.

I’m totally down for multiplayer If folks are interested.

[edit] - re: dropship items. The canteen and the oxygen tank are huge. It’s also 100% worth grinding out the armor.

[coopasonic]

I’m currently doing Payday: Extraction solo, and the grind to get the tier four stuff was nothing compared to waiting for the stupid extractor to do its thing. I’ve leveled from 60 to 66 just sniping wolves while feeding it fuel. What a beat down.

I did that earlier this week, I didn't think the extraction part took that long at all. I wonder if they changed it in the past few days. They do throw out updates insanely quickly.

[Fretmute]

I'm pretty certain they nerfed the extractor. It's about 1 ore per minute now, and to fully mine the vein is still 200+ ore, so you have to babysit it for three hours.

[coopasonic]

Started playing this again recently since I didn't have anything else to play and most of the other survival-craft games I am interested in are still in early access. Amusingly enough, last night I finished the mission Fret and I were discussing two years ago. I think the extractors have been sped up some as it didn't take that long this time and I only needed two cans of fuel (used to be 6 or 7).

There is also an expansion that seems like it would let you use a persistent open world to do missions. I haven't jumped into that yet as I am still getting back up to speed and hoping to drag my kid back into it once marching season is over.