The survival game Icarus revives the characters of many players who failed to save themselves to a space station in time.
The new sci-fi survival game Icarus puts quite a bit of pressure on its players with tough rules – and, unfortunately, lousy performance. In addition to the usual challenges in the survival genre like hunger, thirst and a hostile environment, you also have to observe time limits in order to survive.
In the first time after the release, therefore, many characters apparently met with permanent death. At the request of players, the developers are therefore bringing back quite a few of the lost explorers. We explain why they are taking this step here.
Exceptionally tough rules
You don’t have it easy in Icarus: Your missions from the space station to the planet Icarus are always limited to a few hours, days or weeks. If you don’t make it to your ship before the time runs out, your character and all of his progress and equipment will be lost – forever.
There is also another high hurdle: The time of your mission runs out even when you are not playing. Many players have probably failed because something often comes up in real life.
Some players may also not have been aware of the difference between “normal death” and permatod: If you die during a mission, you can respawn with your character and simply pick up your loot again. If you miss the ship, however, this is no longer possible.
Many players apparently did not know these rules in their entirety or missed the opportunity to save themselves from the planet’s surface in time for other reasons. According to the developers, in some cases bugs or unreachable servers were also responsible for players having to leave their characters behind.
In fact, Icarus suffers from a multitude of technical problems and would probably have been better released in Early Access. But why the sci-fi survival game could still become a real hit.
Rescue as a Christmas present
On December 21, 2021, the developers announced on (Steam) that they had been working on a Christmas miracle for the past few weeks: All characters left behind on the planet are now back on board your station. A total of 64,000 lost explorers have been rescued. The developers emphasise that it is frustrating to lose a character in an unfair way, for example due to bugs. In addition, the rules may not have been communicated clearly enough.
A hotfix has also made it possible to display more than three slots in the character selection, so that you can access all your characters.
Two things should be noted, however: On the one hand, only characters that did not make it back to the space station in time were revived. Characters deleted by players will not be brought back.
Also, the limit of three slots still applies to new characters. If you want to create a new explorer, but now have three or more slots occupied by the resurrection, you must first delete enough other characters.
Have you also lost a character and are now happy about its return? Tell us about your experiences in the comments!
