What is the point of Icarus game? Surviving a Death World Against the Odds

Icarus is a hardcore survival game focused on high risk prospecting missions on an alien planet where everything wants you dead. Players must confront deadly weather, vicious wildlife, a malicious planet, and the ticking clock of an approaching dropship rendezvous. Every decision carries tremendous risk/reward pressure with failure spelling total loss. The planet Icarus itself is the real adversary.

The Hostile Planet Icarus

Icarus was once targeted for terraforming before unexplained "exotics" turned it into a death world inhospitable to humans. The planet still holds invaluable exotic minerals but surviving here pushes players to their limits.

Ferocious wildlife like wolves, bears, and tigers roam lush forests dotted with resource-rich caves. Frigid mountain peaks harbor valuable ore deposits but punish the unprepared with deadly blizzards. Electrical storms can flash fry exposed prospectors while meteor showers bombard the landscape. Massive "World Bosses" like the colossal Mammoth present unique survival tests. Even lush meadows aren‘t safe from sinkholes or poison gas vents.

Icarus offers visual splendor and environmental diversity but make no mistake, this planet wants you dead at every opportunity.

High Risk Prospecting Missions

Players undertake "prospecting missions" ranging from 1-4 hours in length. Each session presents primary objectives like terrain scans, signal tracking, resource gathering, equipment recovery, and base establishment while battling the planet itself.

While exploring you must:

• Continually gather resources and craft tools, weapons, base components
• Establish secure shelter, power sources, storage containers
• Maintain supplies of food, water, medicine and combat increasing injuries
• Decipher mission clues and track objectives
• Fend off attacks from wildlife across multiple biomes
• Endure deadly environmental hazards like meteor showers, lightning storms or blizzards

But with the dropship clock ticking down you face impossible decisions. Do you retrieve just-discovered exotic ore deposits knowing storms approach? Do you gambling pushing beyond the safety of your established forward camp? Icarus punishes the timid and reckless alike.

Escape or Lose Everything

As the prospecting window nears expiration you must ultimately choose between banking your gains or risking it all. Failed extractions result in all lost progress, valuable items, even character death. But successful escapes let you to use hard-earned exotic minerals to craft new gear, learn new talents, and upgrade your prospects on future missions.

Icarus is about balancing boldness and caution in a lethal environment. Methodical planning allows ambitious expeditions but disaster is one mistake away. Few games punish failure so completely yet reward strategic mastery so richly. Venture carefully, push your luck, but ultimately escape with life and limb intact.

Brain and Brawn – Crafting & Combat Systems

To stand any chance of overcoming Icarus’ death world players utilize robust crafting and combat systems. Mission start with basic tools but quickly escalate in complexity.

The deep crafting system branches across 5 categories:

• Weapons – Spears, bows, pepperbox gun kits
• Tools – Pickaxes, shovels, grappling guns, survey equipment
• Equipment – Oxygen tanks, terrain scanners, dropship beacons
• Base Building – Walls, floors, doors, defensive structures
• Consumables – Medicines, weapon coatings, packaged food/water

Crafting combines resources harvested from biomes like wood, fiber, stone, bone and ore. Higher quality blueprints yield superior gear for better survival odds including guns, explosives, vehicles and advanced base components. Players must balance item usefulness across their weight, durability, and attribute bonuses.

Wildlife roams surrounded by plentiful food allowing stealthy takedowns. As you improve weapons firearm options unlock bringing new combat tactics. However even basic spears and bows take down larger creatures with carefully aimed shots.

Choose flight or fight but don‘t forget your environment. A burning forest or incoming storm may prove more dangerous than that angry wolf. Utilize every advantage in your struggle to endure Icarus!

Specialization Through Talents

Increasing your odds of survival and mission success involves more than just sturdy spears. Players unlock access to Talent Trees after gaining experience letting them specialize in key attributes and abilities.

• Outlander – Exploration, movement, resilience
• Worker – Crafting, harvesting, efficiency
• Fighter – Combat, damage output, weapon mastery
• Survivalist – Health, food/water management
• Industrial – Base building, equipment effectiveness

Allocate Talent Points strategically to amplify your prospects. Outlanders traverse biomes rapidly while Fighters excel in close combat. Survivalists overcome environmental effects better than Industrial experts manage complex automated base defenses. Combine complimentary Talents to improve strength, speed, damage and more. Survival depends on your specialized skills.

Friends or Foes?

While Icarus hosts cooperative multiplayer for groups up to 8, the planet remains the true enemy. Work collectively to gather resources, build sprawling frontier forts, and take down larger creatures. Strategize LONG-term base locations central to key objectives and resources. Most importantly coordinate extraction plans managing weight, priorities and drop off order.

Band together to improve survival but don‘t forget planet Icarus grants no mercy or favors. Stay sharp against environmental dangers. If ANY prospector dies or fails extraction all progress is lost. Cooperate but plan cautiously. Not even your friends can save you from this death world for long.

Conclusion

Icarus offers one of the most challenging, unforgiving survival experiences in gaming. Only the obsessive, diligent and daring will stand any hope of overcoming Hostile prospecting missions yet tremendous rewards await those you do. Icarus will readily destroy the complacent and careless across fantastically perilous landscapes. Strategize, specialize and survive at all costs if you hope to master prospecting on the planet Icarus!