For us, a key purpose of the beta weekends was for you to stress-test Icarus’ core gameplay systems and balance. Elements like session-based progression rather than a persistent world, destructive storms in a game about building, or mission objectives in an open-world game are calculated risks for a survival game. But if we don’t try some new things out, the genre won’t evolve.
It’s equally important that we exit Beta and begin to treat Icarus as a live, evolving game. The core game design has now been tested and solidified, a mountain of launch content is loaded - we now begin building on it.
The Beta Weekend format of unlocking new features, quickly fixing bugs and optimizing every two weeks has worked really well for our team and the health of the game.
The session-based nature of Icarus makes it possible for us to add new mission types, for Factions to sell new powerful and rule-changing items in the Workshop, or for the planet itself to evolve.
Thanks to you, our players and player community, our Beta Weekends were also commercially successful. Icarus was Steam’s top-selling game during its first Beta Weekend in August and is one of Steam’s Most Wishlisted games at the moment. What this means is that we have the financial certainty to keep growing Icarus and deliver on our planned DLC.
While DLC chapters New Horizons and Dangerous Frontiers are planned for next year, we’ll be making regular updates to the base game too for no extra cost.
See you on Icarus.
- Dean “Rocket” Hall, Gamerunner
Launching this weekend:
Icarus will launch worldwide on Steam this weekend at:
- 2pm Friday 3 December 2021 PST
- 10pm Friday 3 December 2021 UTC
- 11am Saturday 4 December 2021 NZT
What to expect in 1.0
Our Beta Weekend format also means there are some features that Beta Testers haven’t experienced yet: Outposts, more Missions, the Tier 4 tech, mining Exotic Matter and Orbital Workshop tech.
We’ll have more details about these tomorrow.
