Icarus News

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What struggles did the Icarus development team face during New Zealand's first Covid-19 lockdown?

In this episode, Dean mentions how global restrictions kept many from attending international gaming events where budding relationships with potential partners and publishers form.

Martin Ponichtera our Senior Software Engineer details the new idea of "FLOD" Foliage Level Of Detail as a solution to some of Icarus architectural problems when players interacted with the environment around them.

"The Making of Icarus” will publish new episodes weekly at www.youtube.com/surviveicarus made by our very own in-house cameraman Beinn Chapple-Law.

Join our Discord to chat with our Community Manager and our Developers!
Discord.gg/SurviveIcarus

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

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This week we bring you another video in our “The Making of Icarus” series.

Olympus is our internal codename for the area Prospectors will explore when dropping onto Icarus for the very first time. While the environment is familiar, Senior Concept Artist George Lovesy explains the vision for Olympus and how it will evolve into something more dangerous and exotic.

Technical Lead Ben Carnell zones-in on the Industrial Simulator, and how this allowed our developers to create systems and gameplay that they could iterate upon fast.

“The Making of Icarus” will publish new episodes weekly at www.youtube.com/surviveicarus made by our very own in-house cameraman Beinn Chapple-Law.

Join our Discord to chat with our Community Manager and our Developers!
Discord.gg/SurviveIcarus

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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/