Icarus: I'm not even sure what this game is...

[wonko the sane?]

Alright, because we all know I have a type: open world, survival crafting game.

But... like... the distillation open world, survival crafting games? No zombies, no looting structures, no demons (though... terronaus are maybe?) nothing overtly outlandish or outrageous. I mean, it is a sci-fi setting (they tried terraforming a world, failed cause of the exotic materials on the planet. Now you're prospectors they've sent down to extract those resources.), but... other than needing to refill your oxygen (and the objects specifically associated with that action.) it's basically "green hell" till you hit technology tier 3.

You hunt, you chop trees, mine minerals, stay hydrated, fight animals (yes, there's a difference.) and explore to find the high value exotics across the biomes. It's not a random gen or procedural map, so it never changes. It's an odd design in that each biome is surrounded by high mountains to act as borders instead of just gradually melding, or even sudden changes, but whatever. They are mutated animals which are adapted to the broken earth ecology, but there's also bunnies and wolves and boars and bears. And those bears will hug you up.

It's kinda zen: you cook some food, drink some water, go break rocks, chop some trees, kill the wolves coming after you. And if you get bored: you can call down a SMPL3 mission, do some stuff for coin, which you can trade against equipment and research on the space station.

It takes a wicked long time to push through the technology tree. Some stuff is gated not by resources, but by level, so you don't enter the iron age until you're level 15, and even then you still need to buy some recipes from the tech tree to actually make use of the stuff.

The real enemy in this is the weather: unless you have advanced equipment, storms can quickly ruin your expedition, and your day. I had to quickly deforest around my first base camp as a thunderstorm started a forest fire just across the river from me.

So yeah, awesome game, really liking it.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Huhn. I spent so long shoving oxite into the O2 slot that it never occurred to me that I could put the oxygen bladder there... Neat. And the hunger system is kinda just... feed yourself, but it's valheims system too where the food gives buffs to health, stamina and other stuff, and you can have a bunch of different meals at the same time.

This game is just... unfolding so slowly, but done so beautifully.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Oh, okay. I need glass for the biofuel lantern... I guess you need the glassworking station for that.

*waits till level up. Uses 1 tech point to buy the station. Builds station*

And... can't make glass there. *Sigh* I guess I need to buy one of the crafting recipes that use glass like the beer bottle to get the recipe. Damnit.

*scrolling through the smelter recipes to check how much platinum I need per ingot*

Oh, there's the glass. Just need to throw silica in the smelter... This is fine.

Not misrepresent this incident: I fell victim to poor observation and the learning curve. I am still loving this game. And in the next play session I will have the biofuel lantern which will burn much longer than the animal fat lantern.

 

[wonko the sane?]

And the biofuel lantern refills itself when placed in the biofuel composter, and lasts so very much longer than the animal fat lantern. And it's a SPOTLIGHT! Bright and clean where the animal fat one was a fairly standard storm lantern lighting a perimeter.

So I managed to get a bunch of ren (the coin used on the space station workshop.) and opted to research and purchase the survival backpack. It increases your inventory space (but not carry weight.) and buffs player speed, reinforces your ankles to lessen fall damage (no idea how it does that.) and one other thing that escapes me at the moment. So before I load my world again, I buy it.

Then I load in... and spend like 10 minutes trying to figure out where the hug it is. Ignore that, play the session then look it up online.

Oh, I need to PHYSICALLY use the drop pod and head back to the station to actually get it... annoying, but holy hell that immersion. Alright, I do it. When I head back up, the session recap (which covers everything from the moment I landed to the moment I left, regardless of how many times I loaded the game.) takes FOR. EV. ER. Because it's spending the entire time processing the achievements I'd earned.

And then the tags actually show up on the character model.

This game, I swear. The UI is almost perfect. The core mechanics are complex but not complicated, and it uses the available resources SO WELL nothing really gets left behind or wasted. In a lot of open world survival games, you eventually hit a point where some stuff gets ignored because you don't have a purpose for it. That has SEEMED to happen here, but then a new recipe or work station opens up which lets you use that stuff in different ways. You always need to be out collecting SOMETHING. I thought I didn't need bone anymore, but I bought a new recipe which lets me make bone dust which is one of the ingredients in one of the available epoxy recipes.

 

[wonko the sane?]

I've FINALLY made it to the point where I'm putting electric lights into my base... and my god does the wiring system SUCK. The wire ends up being very short, it never wants to connect the next segment properly, and if you aren't pixel perfect it tends to just make an overlapping but unconnected mode. I literally wound up building an entire bridge (weather proof even! I used STONE!) to run the wire because my first attempt using power poles to cross the lake simply did not work.

But... once I get some more copper for wiring, my base will have electric lights. Bright, useful, electric lights. No more flickering torches for me.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Shai-hulud vacations on icarus, and is apparently hung over.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Alright! So, MISSIONS!

The original game mode. Missions pay out in game cash and materials which can you used to research and purchase better equipment, and also provides snippets of game lore.

So I did the first two missions, functionally just tutorials. I did them in about 45 minutes combined. For my third mission, I opted for a hunt and kill mission. I've done those before under the SMPL3 missions before, and while they were a challenge: they were not ridiculously hard. So the mission gives me 7 full days, actual days, 24 real hours 7 times over. I figure I would bang this out for a quick pay day in less than an hour.

After my THIRD death at the hand of Kanis the Victorius (which is the actual name of the alpha wolf you need to kill.) I come to conclusion that stone age tools will not work, and I will not "bang this one out in less than an hour". I started investing in INFRASTRUCTURE! I've got forges, anvils, advanced textile processing, MACHINING TOOLS! I crafted a pump action shotgun, and am farming materials to make volatile liquids, so as to mass produce explosive shells.

hug this dog. I am putting him down.

Thankfully, you bring your technical knowledge with you, so all you actually need is resources, and you can progress very, very quickly to advanced tools and weapons. If I can't kill this dog with military grade kit, I'm going to just abandon the mission and go back to open world and explore the map.

 

[wonko the sane?]

I started a new claim (not a new character, different mechanic.) and managed to get a nice base built up. I was comfortable enough to start spending surplus resources on decorative things; Made a nice bed, a coffee table, a sofa, a dresser, sprinkled some rustic candles around... It looked awesome. Spartan (by which I mean, barebones.) but awesome.

So the sun was setting, and I was planning my tomorrow, I wound up having to stand on my coffee to light the hearth cause I put it too close... oh hey, the fires lit. Oh no, wait, that's me, I'm standing on a candle.

So now I am on fire.

Well, this isn't optimal.

I sprint for the exit, lighting literally everything wooden behind me. Thankfully, nothing structural in my base was wood, but the entire inside was gutted. I lost some specialized low end benches which are easy to replace, and everything else was fine. I needed to make a quick run to my copper mine for ore, so I could make nails to rebuild, but... well, at least I know what I'm doing tomorrow.

Thankfully, when disturbed, benches and storage don't get destroyed. They get put into temp storage on a decay timer. I just hauled some ass, shat out reams of quick storage boxes, and crated everything back.

So yeah. No more candles.

 

[wonko the sane?]

I've lost like five moa's in the last few days. They're the fastest riding animal, so it's convenient to use them to cover the map quickly: once tamed they do not fight back, like at all. I would could literally be gnawing on their leg and they simply do not care. The terranaus can defend himself, but they are just... so ******* slow for a horse/boar hybrid. I lost my last two literally in my barn cause a wolf just walked in and went to town. Once I realized there was jive happening, I got back in time just to see the wolf bounding out happily after EATING my stable. At least I got the bones...

Also, and it's such a simple thing, but I finally got around to adding running water to the kitchen and workshop. I didn't care because rainwater is plentiful, canteens hold a ludicrous volume of water and are cheap to manufacture... but I gotta admit, not needing to run outside to the water catchers, and the double productivity on the cement mixer... It's really nice.

I still don't know what this game is, it's like... I don't know, the sims if you like the killing to be first person. But it's just so satisfying and entertaining. Being vaguely domestic on an (ostensibly.) hostile planet. Gonna make a run on the sandworm boss next! I just redecorated and upgraded my kitchen, now I'm going to go kill an abhorrent horror that should not be.

 

[wonko the sane?]

*working in a storm, bright flash*

Am I damaged? Was that lightning?

*gets the achievement for being struck by lightning*

Okay... I guess it was.