ICARUS Review Summary

While the game offers enjoyable gameplay with great visuals and a fun concept, it suffers from poor optimization and locked content behind exploitative DLC pricing.

Good graphics and visuals: Multiple reviews highlight the nice visuals, good graphics, and beautiful world, though some note it looks better when standing still.

Fun and enjoyable gameplay: The game is described as fun, enjoyable, and good overall, with several players expressing they liked playing it.

Great concept and style: Players frequently praise the game's core concept and visual style, calling it cool, interesting, and attractive.

Base building is fun and easy: Building is described as snappy and easy, with cool possibilities like hollowing rocks and cutting trees anywhere for bases.

Detailed and polished experience: Attention to detail, good sound, understandable interface, and working tools/weapons contribute to a polished feel.

DLC pricing is exploitative: Players report that the total cost of DLCs can exceed $200, with many feeling the pricing is predatory and a cash grab. The abundance of expensive DLCs locks significant content behind a paywall.

Content locked behind DLCs: Essential features, missions, trailers, crafting items, and even the main campaign are locked behind paid DLCs. Players feel the game is intentionally cut into pieces to sell separately.

Base game feels incomplete: Many reviews state the base game is empty, boring, and lacks content without purchasing expensive DLCs. It is described as a tech demo or early access product that requires extra payments to feel complete.

Poor optimization and performance: Many players report bad optimization, stutters, lag, FPS drops from 100 to 20-30, and poor performance even on low settings. The game runs poorly especially in multiplayer or with many objects.

High cost for limited content: The full game with DLCs costs significantly more than $70 AAA titles, yet offers limited content. Players feel the price is unjustified, especially when the base game is on sale for $6 but DLCs push the total to over $150.

Survival crafting with multiplayer: The game is described as a survival crafting experience with open world co-op, missions, and building. Players explore, gather resources, and build bases in various modes.

Skill and tech tree progression: Players progress through branched skill trees and a tiered tech tree. Unlocking skills and technology is a core loop for advancement.

DLC content locking features: Significant content like bosses, creatures, and crafting items are locked behind DLC. The base game lacks boss content without purchasing additional content.

Dynamic weather and base damage: A dynamic weather system includes storms that can damage player-built structures. This adds a survival challenge beyond enemy threats.

Resource gathering and physics: Resource gathering involves rocks breaking into parts and trees falling with chopping mechanics. Slope physics can cause unintended sliding.

Frequent crashes and freezes: The game crashes often, including full system freezes, crashes on map launch, during storms, and after save restore, persisting even after lowering graphics.

Poor optimization across hardware: General complaints about terrible optimization, with low FPS on recommended hardware, memory leaks, and performance not improving over time.

Severe stuttering on high-end hardware: Players report unplayable stuttering even on top-tier GPUs like RTX 4090 and RTX 4080, with VRAM overflow and frame drops from 300 to 1 during storms.

Memory leaks and VRAM issues: Memory leaks cause VRAM overflow and crashes, with the game using too much memory and running out of VRAM on high-end cards.

FPS drops during storms: Storms cause severe FPS drops, from 300 to 1 with many building pieces, or down to 10-12 FPS, with GPU usage plummeting.

Aggressive DLC monetization: Players criticize the game for locking core content behind expensive DLCs, making the full experience feel incomplete and overpriced.

Not worth buying: Many players strongly advise against purchasing the game, especially at full price, and recommend waiting for a deep sale or avoiding it entirely.

Base game feels incomplete: The base game is described as lacking content and feeling unfinished, with predatory DLC practices that force additional purchases for a complete experience.

Technical issues and bugs: Players report poor optimization, crashes, and game-breaking bugs that make the game unplayable or frustrating, especially on weaker hardware.

Only worth on deep sale: Some players suggest the game is only acceptable at a very low price, such as 90% off or under $10.

Community fair range: $3.00 - $10.00.

Session length: 5.0h.

Icarus has a slow start that can turn enjoyable over time, especially in co-op, but repetitive missions, slow progression, and steep grind cause many players to lose interest after the initial hours.

Friction: slow leveling and grind for materials; repetitive mission objectives; steep learning curve with poor tutorial; solo play feels punishing; tech tree lacks continuity between tiers; early-to-mid game gear choices can severely delay progression.

Unlock drivers: cooperative multiplayer with role division; persistent workshop meta-progression; open world mode with no mission timer; unlocking technology tiers for better equipment and comfort.

Co-op Social Survivor: Plays in a group of 2-8, dividing tasks like building, hunting, and combat. Relies on teamwork to overcome grind and difficulty. Enjoys the chaos and stories that emerge from multiplayer sessions. Motivation: Social bonding and shared survival through cooperative role specialization. Stance: buy.

Grind-Tolerant Builder: Methodical, spends hours gathering resources, building elaborate bases, and slowly climbing the tech tree. Enjoys the loop of mining, crafting, and expanding. Often plays in open world mode. Motivation: Long-term progression and base building satisfaction. Stance: sale.

Mission-Oriented Progression Seeker: Focuses on mission objectives, extracts exotics and currency, and invests in orbital workshop items. Alternates between drop-in missions and open world sessions. Values the sense of constant advancement. Motivation: Completing missions and earning permanent meta-progression rewards. Stance: sale.

Most hardware cohorts report significant performance issues including stuttering, severe FPS drops, memory leaks, and poor optimization, while lower-end Windows setups show inconsistent results with some players achieving acceptable frame rates.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: negative. Players with 8-11GB VRAM experience severe stuttering, memory leaks, and frequent FPS drops, often requiring workarounds like limiting build size and increasing pagefile.

Windows <8GB VRAM / <16GB RAM: mixed. Performance is inconsistent; some players report stable 60fps while others face crashes, memory errors, and severe frame drops.

Windows <8GB VRAM / 16-31GB RAM: negative. Players with <8GB VRAM and 16-31GB RAM note poor optimization, frequent stutters, crashes, and severe FPS drops, especially in bases or with RTX enabled.

Steam Deck: The game suffers from frequent crashes, severe performance drops, lack of native controller support, and an unadjustably small UI text. On Steam Deck, it requires extensive tinkering (graphics tweaks, FSR, Proton workarounds) and even then may experience crippling frame stuttering. The combination of instability and poor input support makes it a high-friction experience.

Linux and Proton: The game has significant Linux/Proton compatibility issues, particularly severe performance degradation on Nvidia GPUs and frequent crashes. While some users can play with AMD GPUs or after switching to DX11 and specific Proton versions, many find it unplayable. Multiplayer and server setup add further friction. The overall experience requires tinkering and is barely playable for a substantial portion of Linux users.

Monetization: The game's monetization is heavily criticized for its excessive and expensive DLCs, many of which lock essential content like the campaign, maps, and features. The base game feels incomplete, and the total cost of all DLCs far exceeds the base game price, leading to accusations of greed and deceptive marketing. However, there are no in-game microtransactions (consumables, loot boxes, or pay-to-win elements), only traditional paid expansions.

External guides: The game suffers from poor onboarding and obscure mission design, forcing players to rely heavily on external wikis, maps, and guides to understand systems, complete quests, and navigate the world. While crafting and recipe information gaps exist, the primary barriers are instructional and exploratory data dependencies, making external resources feel mandatory.

Unable to post negative review: Players are unable to submit negative reviews on Steam, which restricts their ability to express dissatisfaction through the review system.