Survival game Icarus’ beta was the top-selling game on Steam during its first Beta Weekend, and developer RocketWerkz has decided to start its second Beta Weekend a day early to give players more time to experience all the new content added to the game.
Icarus is currently available for pre-order customers to test through a series of Beta Weekends before the full game launches in late November. The developers are unlocking new features and content every two weeks, but it is only playable during the weekend. This latest weekend has unlocked storms, followed by the arctic biome in two weeks’ time, then the desert biome, and special faction missions set by the corporations vying for control of Icarus in the following weeks.
“Based on the awesome community feedback and pre-orders from our first Beta Weekend, we’ve added so many new items, gameplay systems and balance changes in the last two weeks that we felt players would need more time to grapple with it,” says Game Runner and RocketWerkz CEO Dean Hall.
“We believe the key to making a great survival game is the ability to rapidly iterate. We have spent a long time developing the architecture to support this, and this Beta Weekend demonstrates our ability to rapidly iterate the game based on player feedback.”“While base-destroying storms is the big new feature we’ve unlocked for this Beta Weekend, we’ve also made the playable map four times larger and added new building pieces, hidden caves, more varied animal threats, firearms, debuffs and more talents. It’s a different game from even two weeks ago.”
