V Rising
About
Icarus for PC is a session-based survival game and – a heads up for Greek mythology fans who might otherwise be disappointed – it involves a fictional planet called Icarus: it is not about the boy who didn’t listen to his dad, Daedalus (Dadalus?) and flew too close to the sun with rather terminal consequences!
About the Game
The storyline is simply told: an attempt was made, a short time before the story begins, to terraform Icarus, but something went horribly wrong because the planet ...
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Release date:
2 December 2021
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Recent Steam reviews:
Very positive
(627)
All Steam reviews:
Mostly positive
(33335)
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Description
Icarus for PC is a session-based survival game and – a heads up for Greek mythology fans who might otherwise be disappointed – it involves a fictional planet called Icarus: it is not about the boy who didn’t listen to his dad, Daedalus (Dadalus?) and flew too close to the sun with rather terminal consequences!
The storyline is simply told: an attempt was made, a short time before the story begins, to terraform Icarus, but something went horribly wrong because the planet was full of ‘exotics’ – unknown substances that wreaked havoc with the terraforming process. The player’s task is to investigate the exotics for your bosses at UDA, transport them safely to Earth and, of course, sell them for a massive profit if at all possible.
You live on a space station that is orbiting the planet and are dropped down to the land once you have accepted a mission contract. Every mission has a timer, and you must return to home base before this timer runs out. Once time is up, your escape pod returns to the space station, and your character will remain on the surface, along with any power-ups and loot – permanently! (See The Nitty Gritty below for more about this.)
As with most survival games, you are given the bare minimum with which you can survive. You must use your rudimentary tools to survive, build better tools and keep yourself always improving. You have to gather all sorts of resources as well as looking for the exotic substances: oxygen, food, water, and material to construct shelters to protect you from the hostile environment. Night and day are equally hard to survive, although in different ways.
Amongst other things, you will face major weather events, such as lightning setting your camp on fire, storms pushing you off course, and the very dark nights are hard to navigate, even with a handy torch to light your way. Needless to say, the missions become more and more complex and harder to achieve as you progress.
You are supplied with nothing but an exposure suit (to prevent immediate death, which would be fun for no one!) and you must immediately set about deciding a good balance between survival and achieving your mission. The more you power up, the better abilities and crafting blueprints you can access, giving you superior tools, weapons and materials. Just remember: that countdown timer is always on!
If you make it back to the escape pod, you will keep your power-ups and blueprints, but will still start your next mission with very little in your inventory, so the endless fight for mere survival begins again too.
You work for the UDA United Development Agency, who were the people who initiated the original terra-forming project before you came onto the scene, and they do want you to return safely – but they also really want those exotics too!
You can play solo, or co-op in groups of up to eight, with both types of play comprising the above-described timed missions. A very important note is that there is permadeath in Icarus. There is also no easy out from a tricky mission that is running out of time. In other words, if you abandon a mission halfway through, the countdown timer will continue to run down and your character will be lost to you forever!
Co-op play is kinder as your teammates can revive you which allows you to keep your loot and XP (and not be permadead!) but solo players must be careful and cautious at all times. If your character does happen to die during a mission, you have to start afresh, with a new completely untrained character who must be taught and build everything from scratch. This possibility leads to some serious heart-pounding fear in the last tick-tocks of the timer!
A pro tip: whenever you are on a mission, make a point of laying down bedrolls every now and then. When you die and respawn, you will come back to your latest bedroll, and if you are very close – or very quick! – you can snatch up your dropped loot before someone else gets there. While some elements of the game are fixed: caves, lakes and so on, much of the rest of the game is procedurally generated, so you will see a new world each time you visit.
Take care of your health and stamina bars, which run down when you don’t eat, when you take damage, or when you exert yourself by, for example, mining. Seek shelter from storms too as this can also weaken you. The wildlife, transplanted from Earth, is often unhappy about it, and will attack you. And don’t spend too much time building elaborate fortifications: it will vanish like yesterday’s sea castle with the tide, in between missions!
NB: If you have played the game before and left in a fury because you didn’t know about the permadeath, it might be worth your while coming back and peeping into your character list. The developers realised that the details had been lacking, following a storm of complaints, and they resurrected a bunch of characters from the void of permadeath. The resurrected are a mixture of characters left with a running mission timer, or who died on mission.
The game was very buggy at first, but now is vastly improved, so check back in if you’re one of those who lost characters (they might be waiting for you) or if the glitching drove you away – you should have a much more pleasant experience this time around. However, don’t be tempted to leave your character in limbo: the developers say they will not be bringing any more characters back from the dead!
Icarus didn’t want to be terraformed, animals didn’t want to be transplanted to a strange place, and the exotic substances just aren’t meant for bare-skin human contact. Just about everything will kill you on Icarus including:
Bears will kill you if you stand still for too long. And they are surprisingly quiet, creeping up on you and killing you before you know it
Boars will trample you underfoot and then gore the remains for fun
Wolves remember that men chose dogs over them and they still haven’t forgiven us!
Storms come in various types. Some are just bad weather; others are actively toxic – do yourself a favour and avoid them all if you can!
Trees: chopping a tree down without paying attention to the way it’s going to fall will kill you
If in any doubt about anything: assume it will kill you or try to! It’s not paranoia if it’s true!
Icarus for PC is available for purchase on Instant Gaming for a fraction of its retail price. You will receive an official key and be able to play the game in seconds. Play smart. Pay less.
About the Game
The storyline is simply told: an attempt was made, a short time before the story begins, to terraform Icarus, but something went horribly wrong because the planet was full of ‘exotics’ – unknown substances that wreaked havoc with the terraforming process. The player’s task is to investigate the exotics for your bosses at UDA, transport them safely to Earth and, of course, sell them for a massive profit if at all possible.
You live on a space station that is orbiting the planet and are dropped down to the land once you have accepted a mission contract. Every mission has a timer, and you must return to home base before this timer runs out. Once time is up, your escape pod returns to the space station, and your character will remain on the surface, along with any power-ups and loot – permanently! (See The Nitty Gritty below for more about this.)
As with most survival games, you are given the bare minimum with which you can survive. You must use your rudimentary tools to survive, build better tools and keep yourself always improving. You have to gather all sorts of resources as well as looking for the exotic substances: oxygen, food, water, and material to construct shelters to protect you from the hostile environment. Night and day are equally hard to survive, although in different ways.
Amongst other things, you will face major weather events, such as lightning setting your camp on fire, storms pushing you off course, and the very dark nights are hard to navigate, even with a handy torch to light your way. Needless to say, the missions become more and more complex and harder to achieve as you progress.
You are supplied with nothing but an exposure suit (to prevent immediate death, which would be fun for no one!) and you must immediately set about deciding a good balance between survival and achieving your mission. The more you power up, the better abilities and crafting blueprints you can access, giving you superior tools, weapons and materials. Just remember: that countdown timer is always on!
If you make it back to the escape pod, you will keep your power-ups and blueprints, but will still start your next mission with very little in your inventory, so the endless fight for mere survival begins again too.
You work for the UDA United Development Agency, who were the people who initiated the original terra-forming project before you came onto the scene, and they do want you to return safely – but they also really want those exotics too!
The Nitty Gritty
You can play solo, or co-op in groups of up to eight, with both types of play comprising the above-described timed missions. A very important note is that there is permadeath in Icarus. There is also no easy out from a tricky mission that is running out of time. In other words, if you abandon a mission halfway through, the countdown timer will continue to run down and your character will be lost to you forever!
Co-op play is kinder as your teammates can revive you which allows you to keep your loot and XP (and not be permadead!) but solo players must be careful and cautious at all times. If your character does happen to die during a mission, you have to start afresh, with a new completely untrained character who must be taught and build everything from scratch. This possibility leads to some serious heart-pounding fear in the last tick-tocks of the timer!
A pro tip: whenever you are on a mission, make a point of laying down bedrolls every now and then. When you die and respawn, you will come back to your latest bedroll, and if you are very close – or very quick! – you can snatch up your dropped loot before someone else gets there. While some elements of the game are fixed: caves, lakes and so on, much of the rest of the game is procedurally generated, so you will see a new world each time you visit.
Take care of your health and stamina bars, which run down when you don’t eat, when you take damage, or when you exert yourself by, for example, mining. Seek shelter from storms too as this can also weaken you. The wildlife, transplanted from Earth, is often unhappy about it, and will attack you. And don’t spend too much time building elaborate fortifications: it will vanish like yesterday’s sea castle with the tide, in between missions!
NB: If you have played the game before and left in a fury because you didn’t know about the permadeath, it might be worth your while coming back and peeping into your character list. The developers realised that the details had been lacking, following a storm of complaints, and they resurrected a bunch of characters from the void of permadeath. The resurrected are a mixture of characters left with a running mission timer, or who died on mission.
The game was very buggy at first, but now is vastly improved, so check back in if you’re one of those who lost characters (they might be waiting for you) or if the glitching drove you away – you should have a much more pleasant experience this time around. However, don’t be tempted to leave your character in limbo: the developers say they will not be bringing any more characters back from the dead!
Ways to Die on Icarus
Icarus didn’t want to be terraformed, animals didn’t want to be transplanted to a strange place, and the exotic substances just aren’t meant for bare-skin human contact. Just about everything will kill you on Icarus including:
If in any doubt about anything: assume it will kill you or try to! It’s not paranoia if it’s true!
Icarus for PC is available for purchase on Instant Gaming for a fraction of its retail price. You will receive an official key and be able to play the game in seconds. Play smart. Pay less.
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Reviews
Best reviews
Fantastic survival game that keeps being updated and renewed by the developers!
unlike what most people claim, the time limit given for prospects is an added value rather than a limitation, it allows you to optimize the times and the strategies in play.
Really recommended!
unlike what most people claim, the time limit given for prospects is an added value rather than a limitation, it allows you to optimize the times and the strategies in play.
Really recommended!
2023-03-31T15:51:46-0400
It's an ok survivor game, the builds are good for variaty of game play, but the missions are a bit boring special the older ones, it took me 50min for a mission and 40min was just walking back and forth. I would recommend to play with friends.
- Good to play with friends
- Bluids
- Still need performance optimizations
- A lot of mission are kind boring(walking simulator)
2023-08-09T03:15:55-0400
Recent reviews
The game may not be bad, but since the graphics are a little weird, not to say a disaster, I deleted the game very quickly because I couldn't fix it! My computer is fine, and more than strong enough, I just don't like the graphics at all, even on ultra settings, the game doesn't look good to me, as if it's still on some medium-low settings! Rating 3/10!
2023-10-05T23:34:54-0400
Hello. Before 2 days I bought this game and I can't play even on low graphics. My specs for my pc are GPU sapphire radeon rx 5700 xt 8gb nitro+, cpu amd ryzen 7 3700X , 16 gb ram and fast net. Whatever I do it's unplayable. 2 players in one server , with good pcs and we can't play. When you ride an animal sometimes the camera stay high and the graphics when you run deforms disfigure the hands.
2023-01-13T10:14:20-0500
Best reviews
Recent reviews
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Game bought on IG
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