Icarus developer RocketWerkz is changing the way that players in the survival game lose their characters forever due to permadeath. The developer, who is also behind the survival horror game DayZ is going to be offering an "insurance" on select missions that will make it a little bit easier for players to use their characters again even if they aren't able to make it back to the dropship before the time runs out.
This isn't the first time that the Icarus developers have had to dial the difficulty back just a little. Not long after the game launched the company had to make some changes after players started complaining about how often their characters were dying. The point of the game is to do down to the planet named Icarus, savage for supplies and materials, and then return to the dropship and get back to the orbiting space station before the mission timer runs out. If the player does not get back to their dropship before that time hits zero, the character suffers permadeath. Last month, RocketWerkz raised thousands of characters from the grave, claiming it didn't believe players understood how permadeath worked in the game.
RocketWerkz's latest plan to avoid people dying too often is this new insurance option. According to an update on the game's Steam page, the DayZ developer's new feature means that even if a player doesn't get back to the dropship, they will still appear back on the space station as long as they were playing one of the insured missions.
The studio said this tweak is the first of several it's going to make in order to try and make Icarus more enjoyable for more players. The company has said it's planning quite a few new updates in the very near future.
Those who might rush out and play another round of Icarus after finding out this news need to be careful of one big detail. As of now, the insurance option is not available on every mission. It appears for the moment there are about 15 of the available 60 tasks that have the insurance attached.
It makes quite a bit of sense that these kinds of tweaks and changes would be coming on the fly. Having just been released in December, it appears there were at least a few bumps along the way as Icarus's official launch was delayed a bit back in the latter part of the summer.
Icarus is currently available on PC.
Source: Steam