As a studio we all want to work on unique ideas, try new things, and experiment with the games we make. One of the consequences of this is not always getting it right. Over the past month we have been making adjustments to the game to correct the aspects we didn't quite get right. This week we correct what is perhaps one of the most contentious design decisions - a real world drop timer. Mostly the original decision was one of pragmatism, but we're in a place now we can add more nuance. Thank you for sticking with us, and helping us test and adjust this concept. We look forward to continuing this process in our future updates.
- Dean Hall, Gamerunner

Icarus’ mission timer system has changed

After a lot of deliberation and player feedback, we’ve removed the real-world mission timer in favor of a new, in-game mission timer. That isn’t the only big update this week though - we’ve also introduced tiered mission difficulties, more temperature balancing, new Workshop items and a new mission to boot.

(No, this isn’t an April Fools)

In-game Mission Timer

When we launched Icarus, a defining feature of the game was the real-world timer that counted down as soon as a prospect started, regardless if you were actively playing it or not.

While our intent was to provide a sense of realism and urgency, for many player the real-world time limit was too restrictive, too much pressure or an unpleasant surprise. Players who didn’t have the time to play throughout the week would often be punished and lose their characters and progress if life intervened.

After a lot of deliberation, we have swapped from Real-Time to In-Game time. The timer for the prospect will only count down while a player is on the prospect. If you are doing a prospect with one character, then return to character select and jump on a different character. The first character and prospect time will not progress unless you (or a friend) is actively playing on that prospect.

Icarus is still very much a time-based game. This change doesn’t remove that, but should make the challenge fairer. Players still need to judge how long they spend preparing before venturing out on a mission, or whether to pace themselves or race ahead.

Over the next few weeks we plan to review and shorten some mission lengths since you no longer need a week or more to complete small missions.

In Online mode, your prospect’s save game will be deleted after 90 days. We think this gives you more than enough time to complete even the most complex missions. Offline prospects and Outposts are stored on your local PC, so are permanent.

This is a pretty fundamental change to Icarus' game design. Our design philosophy is that games are ‘played, not made' and trying something new in the genre, learning from player feedback and adjusting course is what game development is all about.

Note: With this change, all existing prospects will have their timer ‘refreshed’ as we convert over to the new system, so you current live missions will get extra time.

Mission Difficulty Options

Mission Difficulty variations are finally here. We previously introduced insured drops, hardcore drop variants and different length missions, now we’re expanding the pool of available difficulties to Easy, Medium, Hard and Hardcore. Alongside this, you can add Insurance to all available variants.

So how will this work?

Missions range in difficulty with the potential rewards scaling alongside them. Easier missions will reap lower payouts but provide a simpler experience while hardcore missions will provide lucrative opportunities but with extremely difficult challenges, including the most risky of them all, no respawning.

You always have the option, however, to purchase Insurance for any mission regardless of the difficulty. This will ensure if your timer runs out, your character will be safely returned to the space station. Insurance comes at a cost though: 33% of your total purse.

Some early missions will come with Insurance enforced, to introduce new players to the game before they venture out into the unknown.

For now, the mission timer will not be influenced by the difficulty level, but it is something we may look to do in the future. For now, Enemy Health, Enemy Melee Damage, Enemy Speed, Enemy Perception, Player Experience, Specific Creature Spawn Rates and Number of Respawns will all be factors influenced by the difficulty.

While we don’t have exact ‘recommended player levels’ for each difficulty, our suggestion is that Easy is for players who want to relax and explore Icarus, Medium is the base difficulty and Hard is for people who want a more challenging experience. Risk and Reward go hand-in-hand, so play however you wish.

Hardcore missions provide the most harrowing experience with zero respawns available. Your teammates can still revive you, but staying close to one another is more critical than ever as death does not come with the option of waking up in a cosy bedroll.

We’ll be actively monitoring how these new tiers are balanced. Your feedback is so helpful so keep your thoughts coming in via Feature Upvote and we’ll keep working towards a playing experience that suits every type of prospector there is.

Temperature Rebalance

For last week’s “Scorched and Frozen” update we made some pretty fundamental changes to the way your character interacts with various temperature sources. As with any big change to an established system, there were some unintended results we hadn’t accounted for or that weren’t clear to players. Thanks everyone who worked with us via Discord to investigate the issues and make suggestions.

As we said in the Week 17 update, our goal for these changes was to put the player more in charge of their character’s temperature and for those changes to have a much more tangible impact. The previous system had several limitations which called for a drastic change in the way we handle temperature.

What we didn’t quite account for was the level of 'source-stacking', which didn’t show up in our early testing. Icarus leans heavily into modifiers and stats and it can be quite easy for things to quickly get out of hand in these situations. A 2% change here, another 5% there, it all quickly adds up. For Week 18 we have re-balanced the new system to account for more “auxiliary” sources of temperature.

The other major piece of the puzzle was that we brought back the “safe zone” modifier from the previous system. You’ll notice now that your armor has resumed making changes to the red/blue areas on the temperature bar and we’ve also put in scaling and safety measures to help ensure the character can’t go beyond intended extremes. We found this played much nicer with the direct changes that other temperature sources had on the character and we welcome your feedback on these changes!

New Workshop Items

This update introduces the Larkwell Martinez brand to the Workshop. As long-standing player in the defense industry, they’ve become known for developing tools and weaponry that hits hard - but tough times and budget cuts means the quality and durability of their gear isn't quite what it once was.

You’ll find Larkwell versions of the following items available now: Axe, Pickaxe, Hammer, Sickle, Knife, and Spear. Keep an eye out for more Larkwell additions in the future including some high-tech experimental arrows.

New Mission "Preservation: Stockpile"

The mission this week is set in the canyons, though you'll be venturing all over while you hunt to fill the stockpile shopping list.

You'll have to get your drying racks out as a full dried meats order is being sent back up to the station. Rumor has it that one of the new Larkwell items can assist with the harvesting needed for the order.

Detailed Changelog

• Added new Mission Difficulty System & UI to the Prospect Select Screen.
• Added new Larkwell items: Axe, Pickaxe, Hammer, Sickle, Knife, Spear.
• Added new mission: 'Canyon: Stockpile 2'.
• Converted mission timer to be played time instead of real world time.
• Updated Mission End Screen.
• Fixed New Temperature System:
• Frostnip - Heatstroke occurs after 5 minutes in cold at a 10% chance every 2 minutes thereafter.
• While in Grace Period, Players are not longer effected by temperature afflictions.
• Resistances now shift the safe zones.
• Added new stats for direction temperature shift via modifiers (both internal & external).
• Another Pass on Armor to adjust to new system.
• Small adjustment to safe zone base definitions on the player.
• External temp shown on UI now takes into account water/wet external sources.
• [CRASH] Fixed crash that could occur when the player receives a new quest objective.
• [CRASH] Fixed crash that could occur when terrain gets generated.
• [CRASH] Added safety check to D3D12Texture as a temporary fix for the DirectX 12 crashes until we get a response from UDN.
• [CRASH] Fixed crash that could occur when a player hits an object in a cave.
• Fixed culling of the Ice Shader at a distance on the Frozen Mammoth asset.
• Fixed grenade ballistic settings so that it doesn't launch upright.
• Fixed memory dependencies caused by sprinkler system.
• Fixed memory dependencies caused by light slot items.
• Fixed concrete roof corner pieces having stone icons.
• Improved Bacon icons, mesh, and fixed 4k textures.
• Fixed memory dependencies caused by weapons.
• Fixed Heat Bandage having same mesh as Basic Bandage.
• Fixed the physical material of the stone arrow to be Wood and not Voxel Stone.
• Fixed an issue with the player not being able to interact with items dropped in a dropship.
• Fixed an issue where aggressive fish would not attack clients.
• Fixed a bug where fish were attacking hosts but not clients.
• Revised meshes/textures for metal ingot items.
• Changed the prospect text from friends to steam friends only to make things clearer.
• Added a button to watch the No Rescue video on the title screen.
• Fixed an bug where audio wouldn’t play when some creatures were not visible.
• Fixed an error where some subtitles didn’t match Sol's dialogue in the Waterfall Expedition mission.
• Fixed the Portable Beacon icon unable to be seen by clients.
• Added max retry count to prospect expiry request to backend.