MeinMMO author Dariusz Müller enjoys playing shooters and survival games. In ARK: Survival Evolved, he gathered over 1,500 hours of gameplay and also had a lot of fun with other survival games like No Man’s Sky, Valheim, and Sons of the Forest. A survival game that he particularly likes is Icarus.
Sons of the Forest has done many things right and fulfilled several criteria that I desire in a survival game.
There are dangers to fight, the ability to build a base, various weapons – especially a bow, I love bows – and beautiful nature. I actually don’t need much more to be happy in a survival game. If the game world and its atmosphere engage me and I can immerse myself for hours in building and farming resources, then I can play a survival game for days and have fun.
All of this is accomplished by Sons of the Forest. But while I was walking through the forest and making my way to the next cave, I kept thinking about another survival game and got really eager to play it again: Icarus.
Icarus is not the most well-known game in the genre. For months, I haven’t heard anyone talk about the game, and on Steam, it only had an average of 2,172 players in February (via SteamCharts). In case you don’t know Icarus or have forgotten what it was, I will introduce the title again.
Survival game by DayZ creator with a special twist
Icarus is a survival game by DayZ creator Dean Hall and his new development studio RocketWerkz. The game sends you to the eponymous planet Icarus and was released on Steam in December 2021. Since then, it has received a free DLC that added the new map “Styx”.
The planet Icarus has been chosen by humans as the “new Earth”. The “old” Earth we humans successfully destroyed in the game’s backstory and now want to make the unknown planet inhabitable through terraforming. However, this undertaking fails due to an unknown, exotic substance. This substance now offers the possibility to create new, advanced technology, which is why humans see it as a source of wealth.
Your task is therefore to land on Icarus with a space capsule and find and harvest the substance. However, your license, which allows you to stay on the planet, is time-limited. When it ends, your capsule will lift off again, and you will be stranded on Icarus.
The special twist of the game is to give you a certain time pressure. You must fulfill your current missions before the timer runs out and then return to your capsule. With the collected resources, you can then improve your equipment in the space station and soon embark on your next visit to Icarus. The gameplay principle reminds of extraction shooters and EFT-likes like The Cycle: Frontier or Marauders.
We embed the trailer for the new DLC map Styx here:
Icarus will cough and huff and blow your house down
I am a big fan of the fact that the enemies in Icarus are not zombies, cannibals, or mutants, but simple animals like bears and wolves. This harmonizes with the realistic graphic style of the game and its atmosphere, and it is the main reason I got the urge to play Icarus while playing Sons of the Forest.
I feel comfortable in my little forest on Icarus surrounded by normal animals, building my log cabin, hunting my food, and simply enjoying the process of settling the “new Earth”. Then it occurs to me that I am pursuing a goal on Icarus and that this “new Earth” is not made for peaceful settlers.
On Icarus, there are regular strong storms and bad weather, from which you must seek shelter in your house. But your creation not only needs to look pretty, it must also withstand a lot. The storms wear down the durability of the walls and roofs, and the planet seems to scream at you: “I will cough and huff and blow your house down.”
During a storm, you are primarily occupied with repairing the damage. With a bit of bad luck, a tree may have fallen on your house or lightning may have struck. Once you finally finish the repairs, you must replenish your supplies again. This means you will have to hunt the various animals again, harvest a variety of plants such as watermelons or pumpkins, and produce oxygen, which is not naturally found on Icarus.
Only then will you have some time again to fulfill your goals before the next, possibly even stronger storm rolls in. This keeps things from getting boring in Icarus, especially in the early hours. There is really a lot to do on the hostile planet.
Regular updates but performance issues
Icarus occasionally receives new content from RocketWerkz. For example, when it was released, there were no buffalo, and in the beta, there were no watermelons or pumpkins. With the first free DLC, the new map “Styx” was even added. All of these additions contribute positively to the gaming experience and atmosphere – but they are also content that I feel heavily affects performance.
In the beta of Icarus, I had no performance issues – no lags, stutters, or FPS drops. When the survival game officially launched in December 2021, I barely played it. I was too engrossed in other games, and Icarus slipped down my list. Now, with the release of Sons of the Forest, I took another look at Icarus and was pleased to see the many changes and new content. But suddenly, I also felt stutters and FPS drops.
I have spent several hours in Icarus over the past few days, and I would be completely thrilled with what the game has become if it weren’t for the performance issues that some player reviews on Steam also report.
Normally, Icarus feels tailor-made for me. It has beautiful nature, an immersive atmosphere with devastating storms, normal animals instead of mutants and zombies, a satisfying and varied building system, various resources to farm and items to craft, and quests that promise me several hours of fun along with the survival gameplay.
If RocketWerkz improves performance with future updates or I find a workaround that works for me, then Icarus is one of the best survival games of recent years for me.
Another survival game that would likely love to receive the title of best survival game 2023 is Nightingale:
In the new survival game Nightingale, giants destroy your base – unless you gift them
