Everyone who has pre-ordered Icarus on Steam will gain access to our Beta Weekends, which happen every second weekend. In between these weekends you won’t be able to access the game. To play, look for the Icarus Beta app in your Steam Library (this is different to the Icarus app which will unlock for our full launch).
When are the Beta Weekends?
They’re every two weekends and unlock new content each time:
- 28-29 August – Forest
- 11-12 September – Storms
- 25-26 September – Arctic
- 9-10 October – Mission
- 23-24 October – Desert
- 6-7 November – Mission
- 20-21 November – Community
We’ve structured our Beta Weekends to add more content each time so you can give us clear feedback on each new feature. Once each Beta Weekend is over, we listen to community feedback and do our best to work on any critical fixes before the next Beta Weekend or before our full launch!
Some features will be added at our full launch, after our beta period has finished. Exotic Matter, the mysterious elements that caused Icarus’ terraforming to fail, won’t be available for you to mine until launch but when you do they’ll earn valuable items in the orbital workshop. Outposts, ideal for uninterrupted base building, will also only be available to play after launch.
What time do they start?
Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) 5pm Friday through to 10pm Sunday
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) 12am Saturday through to 5am Monday
New Zealand Time (NZT) 12noon Saturday through to 5pm Monday
If you try to play Icarus outside these times, you’ll see a message explaining that you cannot connect to our servers – in which case, wait and come back for the next scheduled Beta Weekend.
For real-time updates and when you can play, please follow our Twitter here.
Prospects
The prospects you can play will last for the duration of each Beta Weekend.
If you are successful in your prospects and use your dropship to head back to the orbital station, your character’s progress will be kept across each Beta Weekend. This includes your tech and talent tree unlocks, but does not include your planetary inventory. Surviving is easier said than done, so be careful! However, there might be some character wipes during the beta or before launch. Remember though, everyone who has pre-ordered Icarus will receive at 10% XP boost for the launch week so your progress will be faster.
If your character permanently dies, cannot be revived, or you decide to leave your prospect entirely at any point — you can begin another, fresh prospect from the orbital station.
If you want to quit the game mid-way through a prospect, but wish to resume the same prospect later, you can! Just access the in-game menu and quit. When you launch Icarus again, pick that same character and you will be taken back to that prospect.
Characters
There are three character slots available for you to fill! The character level cap and Tech Tree tiers will gradually increase throughout the Beta period.
We’re granting you the opportunity to play around with different talents across different characters during our Beta Weekends! Depending on how you wish to experience Icarus, we would recommend that you spend the first weekend levelling up one character first so you can get into a good rhythm and up your chances of survival.
You cannot share the same Prospect between your three characters. Only one can play a prospect at a time.
Teaming up with other Prospectors
While there are benefits to playing Icarus alone – like becoming a well-rounded and independent prospector – you can also play with your friends!
Currently you can add prospectors to your game session via Steam’s Friend List interface. Please bear (no pun intended!) with us as we look into more avenues surrounding this.
Join our Discord here and find folks to play with in our #LFG (looking for a group) channel. Our community is thriving with people eager to get stuck-in, and those who wish to help others.
Follow us for regular updates
We will be communicating updates in real-time to make announcements regarding:
- When each Beta Weekend goes live
- Server status information
- Known issues and solutions
- Shared media from content creators
- When each Beta Weekend ends
And via our social channels
Unless there are any game-breaking issues, we plan to resolve any bugs throughout the week outside of Beta Weekend activity.
How to report problems and provide us with your Beta Weekend feedback
Icarus is ready for its players! We need your fresh set of eyes to test and play the game. We’re committed to listening to our community so we can develop Icarus to ensure the best possible experience for you on launch day.
Please report bugs and other issues at https://icarus.featureupvote.com
Our devs read these tickets and you can see tags with more detail around its state and progress. Feature Upvote is user-friendly and easy to use without having to log in or make an account.
We have channels within our Discord server where you can discuss Icarus and any issues with other players, but please note we will be monitoring the Feature Upvote page for official reports.
Streaming and VOD content is encouraged!
Whether you are a seasoned or newcoming content creator, we would love for you to show your Icarus gameplay to the world. Keep in mind that Icarus is in Beta, and we are proactively working to squash all bugs and performance issues that arise and that are reported to us.
Our Community Manager Lorii and other developers will be keenly dipping in and out of your channels across Twitch, YouTube and Facebook, saying hello and enjoying your gameplay! We may be streaming Icarus on our accounts too!
Content creators can apply for a beta key through our Rainmaker or Woovit campaigns.
We want to see your gameplay, clips, screenshots and memes as you pump them out online. Tag us @surviveicarus and use our hashtag #surviveicarus so we can see your work!
