Icarus News

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For the past 18 months a videographer has been embedded in the studio filming early game development, design decisions and team meetings to provide a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into making a AAA PC survival video game.

RocketWerkz CEO Dean Hall is keen to embrace open development with the game’s community via the Making of Icarus videos, Discord and Steam communities. “One of the strengths of the DayZ mod was the community involvement in the process, giving feedback in real time and creating a product that was crafted by its players. I wanted to capture this again with Icarus. The ability to be upfront, transparent and raw with the community is what creates trust between us and them and builds a better game,” says Hall.

The first episode talks about the challenge of Icarus' simultaneously sci-fi yet primitive survival setting, rejected early concept art and shows the game's first internal milestone, Woodcutting Simulator, which focussed on getting the feel of core survival game mechanics right.

Future episodes cover world building, tech trees, playtesting, balancing a session-based gameloop and how the New Zealand-based studio handled covid-19 lockdowns.

The Making of Icarus will be published weekly at www.youtube.com/surviveicarus/ and players can join the discussion with our Community Manager and developers on Discord at Discord.gg/SurviveIcarus


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149460/ICARUS/

DayZ creator Dean Hall has been off with his company RocketWerkz working on their new extraterrestrial crafting survival game Icarus. They've now popped up to give a closer look at what your first drop onto the alien planet might be like. Their first livestream sure makes Icarus look like a prettier version of survival games I've seen a lot of, but RocketWerkz seem pretty focused on ensuring Icarus stands out for its session-based setup that challenges you to escape the surface on a drop ship instead of sticking around forever.

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The RocketWerkz team will stream the Icarus gameplay premiere live on Twitch this week!

BE THERE: https://www.twitch.tv/surviveicarus

5pm PST / 8pm EDT on Thursday April 8th 2021.

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“We know that players really want to see the game in action next,” says CEO Dean 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.”

In preparation for the stream - don't forget to watch Icarus: No Rescue. Our live action documentary trailer! (if you didn't see it last week)

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Wishlist NOW to know exactly when the First Cohort gets to drop.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149460/ICARUS/

There are dozens of survival games now, but DayZ still feels like lightning in a bottle. No game before or since has done such a good job of creating tension among players, where the occasional sighting of another human seemed filled with possibility and threat.

It's for this reason alone that I'm interested in Icarus, a scifi survival game from RocketWerkz and Dean Hall, DayZ's designer. An eight minute in-fiction 'documentary' did not give me a second reason.

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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.

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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.”

Wishlist now to stay up to date with the latest in the Icarus universe, and play the game immediately on release!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149460/ICARUS/