This game is a new direction for the survival genre, but not without its missteps as it pushes the boundaries of crossing over survival and episodic elements.

As a survival game, it's... adequate. There's about 10x more depth with cooking than most of the other options, but most of the time, you'll be able to easily farm 2/3 of the resources, with the third not spawning in your biome. The recipes make absolute sense, but I don't feel like they properly reflect regions well. Most of the time, you're going to run around with berry/meat buff, or potentially flatbread/meat if you're in a biome that you've found wheat (after you've made a sickle). I assume this will change in super late game with some of the other recipes specific for downing larger bosses.

The mining, where I have the most experience... is hit or miss. Nodes seemingly don't respawn, and are of varying density. One map we needed to go for electric, and it took a team of 5 of us about 4 hours scouring the map for caves to find gold, because electronics required so much gold, and gold was such a rare resource, that we simply couldn't get enough of it. Meanwhile swimming in iron. Honestly, an easy fix would be a ore replenishment over time... or perhaps we simply weren't in a game long enough to notice it. I've started taking to simply mining out an entire mine, whether we need it or not, so I don't need to go there again. Until of course I found the ridiculous mega-mine in the desert that I actually got lost in... that was an amazing touch.

I hinted on it last paragraph, but the requirements to 'tech up' are very large hurdles. This would make sense if the resource density and gathering reflected on the increased costs of the technologies. Carbon Fiber, for instance, requires two intermediary products to create a new intermediary product that requires smelting. Alternatively, ignoring carbon fiber and teching up, the next tier is just aluminum or titanium to stronger weapons. I'm a factorio player, I love intermediary solutions... but the reason I like it for Factorio is the ability to automate storage, and automatically draw from nearby containers/etc. In a survival game, the only game I've seen successfully do this is Eco. Without some sort of automated sorting, inventory management sucks... but I can't fault Icarus for it, that's true for most of the genre. Icarus just has a few too many branching benches along the way, so you're left searching.

The multiplayer of this game is absolutely on-point. We have two hunters, two builders, two miners, one misc. person. Everyone is collaborating while simultaneously doing our own thing, communicating, and building and clearing objectives rather quickly.

Which brings me to my next point... like most survival games, I can't imagine playing this game solo. That seems like a truly terrible experience for me. While there is a 'solo' skill tree, the problem with the current talent implementation is that you're set once you select them. So if you want to solo between launches with friends, you can't change your spec, and you're going to have a bad time. A dual spec, or multi-spec loadout that you can manage before executing the drop would be a way to alleviate this. But, supposedly it's been identified for further review by RocketWerkz.

I am only level 30-ish (although friends I play with are capped), I have not experienced the endgame, and I've only gained about 50 or so Exotics. I'm not sure what the later game feels like, and how the game is once you've capped your characters. So far I don't see inflating out of too many of the core mechanics, we've just felt like we're faster just due to collaboration and game knowledge.

So... should you buy this game?

If you're a fan of the survival genre AND you have friends to play it with. Yes.
If you're a solo player looking for a survival game, I cannot recommend this game at this time. Look to something more oriented and built upon single person exploration/survival like Subnautica.

I appreciate the world building, the new expansion of the survival genre into episodic approaches, and the impact of the talent selections for how your character feels. The performance, some technology/resource balancing, and single/multiplayer management requires some further adjustment, but it's not radically off.

This game is a new direction for the survival genre, but not without its missteps as it pushes the boundaries of crossing over survival and episodic elements. As a survival game, it's... adequate. There's about 10x more depth with cooking than most of the other options, but most of the time, you'll be able to easily farm 2/3 of the resources, with the third not spawning in your biome. The recipes make absolute sense, but I don't feel like they properly reflect regions well. Most of the time, you're going to run around with berry/meat buff, or potentially flatbread/meat if you're in a biome that you've found wheat (after you've made a sickle). I assume this will change in super late game with some of the other recipes specific for downing larger bosses. The mining, where I have the most experience... is hit or miss. Nodes seemingly don't respawn, and are of varying density. One map we needed to go for electric, and it took a team of 5 of us about 4 hours scouring the map for caves to find gold, because electronics required so much gold, and gold was such a rare resource, that we simply couldn't get enough of it. Meanwhile swimming in iron. Honestly, an easy fix would be a ore replenishment over time... or perhaps we simply weren't in a game long enough to notice it. I've started taking to simply mining out an entire mine, whether we need it or not, so I don't need to go there again. Until of course I found the ridiculous mega-mine in the desert that I actually got lost in... that was an amazing touch. I hinted on it last paragraph, but the requirements to 'tech up' are very large hurdles. This would make sense if the resource density and gathering reflected on the increased costs of the technologies. Carbon Fiber, for instance, requires two intermediary products to create a new intermediary product that requires smelting. Alternatively, ignoring carbon fiber and teching up, the next tier is just aluminum or titanium to stronger weapons. I'm a factorio player, I love intermediary solutions... but the reason I like it for Factorio is the ability to automate storage, and automatically draw from nearby containers/etc. In a survival game, the only game I've seen successfully do this is Eco. Without some sort of automated sorting, inventory management sucks... but I can't fault Icarus for it, that's true for most of the genre. Icarus just has a few too many branching benches along the way, so you're left searching. The multiplayer of this game is absolutely on-point. We have two hunters, two builders, two miners, one misc. person. Everyone is collaborating while simultaneously doing our own thing, communicating, and building and clearing objectives rather quickly. Which brings me to my next point... like most survival games, I can't imagine playing this game solo. That seems like a truly terrible experience for me. While there is a 'solo' skill tree, the problem with the current talent implementation is that you're set once you select them. So if you want to solo between launches with friends, you can't change your spec, and you're going to have a bad time. A dual spec, or multi-spec loadout that you can manage before executing the drop would be a way to alleviate this. But, supposedly it's been identified for further review by RocketWerkz. I am only level 30-ish (although friends I play with are capped), I have not experienced the endgame, and I've only gained about 50 or so Exotics. I'm not sure what the later game feels like, and how the game is once you've capped your characters. So far I don't see inflating out of too many of the core mechanics, we've just felt like we're faster just due to collaboration and game knowledge. So... should you buy this game? If you're a fan of the survival genre AND you have friends to play it with. Yes. If you're a solo player looking for a survival game, I cannot recommend this game at this time. Look to something more oriented and built upon single person exploration/survival like Subnautica. I appreciate the world building, the new expansion of the survival genre into episodic approaches, and the impact of the talent selections for how your character feels. The performance, some technology/resource balancing, and single/multiplayer management requires some further adjustment, but it's not radically off.