Icarus

Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X
Genre: Action
Publisher: Rocketwerkz
Developer: Rocketwerkz
Release Date: Dec. 4, 2021

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'Icarus' Will Relaunch In August With Alien Expansion & Open World Mode

by Rainier on July 28, 2023 @ 9:13 a.m. PDT

Icarus is a premium, multiplayer cooperative survival game where you explore, survive and make your fortune -- if you dare.

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.

RocketWerkz announced that Icarus will relaunch on August 24 with New Frontiers, a major expansion that takes players into Prometheus, a new region where terraforming has failed and hostile alien lifeforms abound.

When it launched in December 2021, Icarus reached number one on Steam’s Global Top Sellers Charts and quickly sold over one million copies. "With New Frontiers we are finally reaching our original vision for the game," says gamerunner Dean Hall.

"We’ve consistently updated Icarus every week for over 85 weeks since launch. The game has grown far beyond what it was at launch, and this expansion adds the alien creatures and landscapes that we know players have been looking forward to. It also combines our unique mission-based gameplay with a huge open world that players can make permanent bases on. This is a major departure from the mission-only approach we launched with, but has been much requested by our player community.”

Icarus' first chapter dropped players into safe Earth-like terraformed zones on the planet. Icarus: New Frontiers ventures into more dangerous areas featuring volcanic, swamp and alien grassland biomes teaming with alien creatures mutated by the terraforming process. The expansion also features six new narrative missions, 100 new items to craft, over 30 orbital workshop items to buy, five new resources and a new Red Exotics currency.

In the New Frontiers expansion players enter Prometheus, a region of Icarus where the terraforming process failed and left the raw alien landscape and life intact but not unaltered. Previously this heavily-restricted zone was declared too dangerous for prospecting but will now be opened to seasoned contractors.

The terraforming process drastically impacted the local wildlife, terribly mutating them into Dreadwings, Lava Hunters, Needlers, Dracs and Drifters. Each hostile new biome features extreme weather events such as ash storms in volcanic regions and acid rain in swamplands.

New mission logic will allow players to launch any mission from their permanent Open World base, including six new narrative missions that unveil a dark mystery to be solved on the planet’s surface.

Other major updates to the game since launch include changing the mission timer from realworld to in-game time, ridable mounts, dedicated servers, farming, fishing, optimizations and much more.

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 available for PC (Steam), possible coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S at a later time.


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