Debuting last week, a brand-new gameplay showcase for the upcoming survival game Icarus has shown fans a brand new IP with the promise of providing revolutionary gameplay mechanics.
Developed by studio RocketWerkz and the creator of DayZ, Dean Hall, Icarus was first revealed in a gameplay trailer roughly ten months ago. Little has been heard of the game since that reveal. That is until the developer decided to show off the title in an hour-long livestream event.
Thanks to said event, players now know what they can expect from Icarus — all of the best aspects of survival games such as Rust and Valheim set on a mysterious alien planet. Players are dropped onto the planet of the game — the titular Icarus — and are forced to survive a world where mankind’s attempts at terraforming went terribly awry.
The livestream, which took place on SurviveIcaru’s Twitch, gave a more detailed description of what exactly the survival gameplay of this PvE would look like. After landing on the world of Icarus, players must scavenge and harvest materials. These materials can then be used to craft weapons and build various structures, storage containers, and other materials. In this aspect, the game feels very much like 2014’s The Forrest. Harvesting and crafting allow players to level up their various stats, such as strength, stamina, and, most importantly, health.
Unlike most Earthbound survival games, food isn’t the only scarce resource that will prove to be vital to a player’s success. Because of the alien environment, players will have a limited oxygen supply. If enough oxygen is not harvested or crafted during a playthrough, the player character will die of suffocation.
In addition to finding the necessary resources to survive, players will also have to brave the various dangers found within the open-world environment. Wildfires, storms and lightning strikes, dangerous alien species all come together to make the environment of Icarus particularly unforgiving.
Unlike most other survival games, players will take multiple trips to the surface of Icarus, called drops. During drops, players must accomplish as much as possible within a limited amount of time without dying. Then, they will have to go back into space to resupply in the player hub — dubbed the off-world station — before the next drop. If the player dies before returning to the station, all progress will be lost.
The developers at RockWerkz certainly have a unique gameplay experience on their hands. Although it has been established for quite some time now, the open-world survival genre has a lot of room to grow. Setting such a survival game on an alien planet in outer space accomplishes just that goal. Hopefully, the end product will be just as ambitious as this latest gameplay reveal seems to indicate.
