An alien world for the taking. Explore, survive and make your fortune — or die trying.

A resource-rich frontier world has opened up for human exploration and exploitation, where hopefuls claim prospects for a limited time to mine for exotic resources.

Icarus takes a session-based approach to survival games. Players take limited-time drops onto a broken planet in search of rare exotic matter, which fuels advanced tech and player progression in the game’s gritty sci-fi universe. While navigating each prospect's unique challenges, players must collect meta-resources to permanently progress, explore the damaged planet, gather resources, craft tools and machinery, build shelter, hunt wildlife, extract the exotic matter and return to their dropship in time.

Filmed in a vivid documentary style with live actors, Icarus: No Rescue is told from the perspective of the earliest prospectors to come to planet Icarus after its terraforming failed, looking back twenty years later. Their search for exotic matter pushed them to their limits as they survived off the land in this brutal alien world. Those who missed their dropship’s return to orbit were left behind forever, while others grew rich crafting exotic matter into new technologies.

“Icarus was humanity’s greatest mistake,” explains game creator Dean Hall. “It was to be a second Earth, the first planet we terraformed and colonised in space. Unknown to us the exotic matter reacted and corrupted the planet’s terraforming, but once we realised their true value the exotics sparked an interstellar gold rush.”

RocketWerkz has a multi-year plan for Icarus, adding chapters with additional playable content and lore. The first chapter, The First Cohort, begins in Icarus’ most Earth-like biomes before the game expands to more alien and threatening zones.

“A great survival game experience needs to provide tension and dread, and a sense of people overcoming extreme odds in extreme conditions,” says Hall. “A failed terraforming scenario lets us mix familiar elements that players resonate with alongside unsettling alien elements.”

A variety of drop missions could last from hours to days or weeks. “Taking a session-based approach gives us the flexibility to combine hand-crafted survival tools with advanced tech trees, while offering a big variety of missions, adding gameplay variations and expanding the game for years to come. All while your characters constantly progress and evolve.”

Built in Unreal Engine 4, Icarus features handcrafted maps, online multiplayer, two tech trees, character attribute system, weather events, destructible buildings and will launch later in 2021 on Steam for PCs.

“We know that players really want to see the game in action next,” says Hall. “So rather than another gameplay-oriented trailer, we plan to start regular developer streams on Twitch and just start playing it with our community.”

The RocketWerkz team will stream Icarus’ gameplay premiere live on Twitchfrom 5pm PST / 8pm EDT on Thursday 8 April.

Harsh environments demand an envirosuit, regular oxygen, food and water, shelter and constant attention. The wildlife is easily provoked, and your plans may need to change on the fly. Take the resources you find back to orbit to craft advanced technology for your drop, either with a crew or solo.

Use your time wisely or be left empty-handed or even left behind. Calculate the risks, stretch your endurance and resources. How far are you willing to go?

Icarus is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X in 2021.