Icarus Critic Reviews

Icarus boldly stakes its claim amongst giants in the field and swiftly proves to be a worthy contender. Everything I saw in the lead up to the release of Icarus made it seem too good to be true, but my faith and patience was rewarded many times over when I finally got to drop planetside for the first time, and the time after that, and the time after that. Icarus is going up on my list of favourite things to come out of New Zealand, alongside pavlova and Lord of the Rings.

A refreshing take on the survival sandbox with a robust approach to progression and countless ways to tackle each mission. Sadly, harsh penalties, bugs, and crashes combine to make this a frustrating off-world expedition.

Despite its flaws, the superior picture quality and solid basic experience still give ICARUS a lot of potential. The level-based mission design makes ICARUS significantly different from traditional survival games, but it also makes most of the player's efforts in vain. If its mission rewards are more generous, the items unlocked in the space station have a wider range of uses, and the settings of character growth system are more reasonable, then I believe that players will also have a better gaming experience than they do now.

Icarus is an absolutely gorgeous, engaging, and challenging survival crafting game. When it’s working correctly, it is a fantastic entry into the genre. When it’s not, the problems are deep and varied. Disconnects, corrupt characters, bugs, and balance problems abound. I look forward to seeing it reach its potential, but it’s hard to see it as anything other than a game that exited Early Access too soon.

Icarus is a hardcore survival game with an innovative concept. Despite its great potential, the story is non-existent. The game punishes playing alone and is in dire need of some polishing when it comes to enemy AI and bugs.

Unfinished, buggy, and broken, Icarus should not have released at this stage. With mind-numbing repetition and baffling design decisions, it's a survival game that's more frustrating than challenging.

I’m honestly confused by how much I enjoyed my time with Icarus. It relies on repetitive loops and often uneventful hiking, on tedious punishments and uninspired objectives. I am not a patient person, and yet, it does enough. The storms are terrifically atmospheric, basic crafting still feels compelling when you’re doing it for the umpteenth time, and oh, I haven’t even mentioned the way it models individual planks tumbling and getting stuck on each other when you chop down a wall. Despite the jank, Icarus’s (eseses) systems feel meticulous, on scales both big and small.