Hi everyone!
We’re super excited to finally be able to talk about what we’re working on next. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably watched the trailer, read the steam page, but still have some questions. We’re probably not ready to answer all the specifics, but we want to share with you why we’re making this game, what Stars of Icarus is at its heart, and why it’s still a Guns of Icarus game. Hope this blog helps you understand what has us so excited! Because we’re diving in deep!
Assemble Your Team
Stars of Icarus, at its heart, is a game about teamwork. Teamwork is something of a running theme for Muse Games, but even more so for the Guns of Icarus series. Every ship in Guns of Icarus was, at its best, a well oiled machine, a coordinated dance of gunfire, communication, and repair. But Guns of Icarus was also strict, and its worst it was drudgery, it was talking to your crew and forgetting about coordinating with your other pilots, it was not playing because you didn’t have 3 friends all online at the same time, it was failing because your one crew member messed up their one loadout slot 20 minutes ago. And that’s not even a criticism, because that’s that fantasy of a militant steampunk balloon that could fall to pieces at any moment, but could also be a gloriously brutal machine of destruction.
But Stars of Icarus is our look at teamwork from a new angle. Stars of Icarus is coming at it from the other direction, where maybe you already have a crew, you have however many friends that are online, and you have the other players in your match. It’s about making it all work despite the fact you didn’t start this game with a Navy platoon and a copy of Art of War in your back pocket. Stars of Icarus is about the asymmetries of combat, and the power you bring to the table by working together, and leveraging the unique strengths of every ship, every player, and every decision. And it’s about making sure every player, in every role, is making meaningful, impactful decisions that feel coordinated, cohesive, and cool as hell.
One of the key questions that really inspired us to this particular new design, is what Guns of Icarus’s teamwork looks like when you’re alone on a ship? What does that mean when you don’t have a crew? It means that your teammates, every ship in the game, has to pick up that slack and work together to keep you intact, and you have to work to keep them alive. When you’re in a fighter, you’re fragile, your firepower is a fraction of a larger ship, and if you aren’t with your team, you’re space debris. And despite all those weaknesses, you’re still valuable when you do work with your team, communicate, and coordinate attacks and retreats. Fighters are an expansion of what teamwork means to the game, not a contraction.
And now we get to the really interesting consequences. Because bringing a fighter in, supporting more variable sizes of player groups, means your team isn’t just “two airships”. In just a 5 player team, you get squadrons of 5 fighters, or a 3 player frigate and a 2 player corvette, or a team of 2 corvettes and a fighter, etc. And then you put that against an enemy squadron. What do you do when you’re 2 crewed ships against a squadron of fighters? What do you do when you have a fighter running interception on your team and they die? Teamwork gets some very exciting new wrinkles, and they spread well beyond the efficiency of your own crew.
But of course, your own crew still matters a lot, and we’ve put plenty of work into making sure the crew experience comes with a ton of interesting decisions and skillful time and resource management. Coordination between captain and crew is as important as ever. Prioritizing gunning, repairs, systems, and components is a team effort, both with the captain, and the team. Stars of Icarus introduces a few new systems and decision points that both influence how you manage your own ship, and how your ship as a whole is engaging with combat. We’re introducing automated systems into Stars of Icarus that reward preparation and teamwork, and allow your crew and ship to further specialize and coordinate with your team. Preparing your ship for combat, managing those resources while you’re fighting, making decisions about how weapons, repairs, and power systems are prioritized are all key skills. In a lot of ways, we’ve tried to trim out roles that didn’t involve teamwork or decision making. We didn’t want you to be glued to the hull, or never get off the front gun. Because that’s not the kind of teamwork we’re chasing on this project.
Now onto what might seem like a bit of a tangent, art style. We know, it’s a big departure from the steampunk of past games. And yeah, anime isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But it’s as core to this game as balloons are to Guns of Icarus. Aesthetics both inform the design of a game, and help communicate those designs and systems to its players. And the world and game we’re building here is one heavily and deeply rooted in the kind of anime that we at Muse grew up watching. The action, the pacing, the themes of camaraderie, all tie in through the aesthetic of 90s anime we’ve chosen.
When a fighter swoops in and fires a laser at your shields and lighting your guns on fire, the sights, the sounds, and the experience of reacting to those events all tie into a shared aesthetic. It helps you understand the game and the world. You see the sci fi laser, you see the glow of the shield, you see the flash of warning lights inside your ship. You understand because of the aesthetic, not through the mechanics. When you and your wingman fly into combat, and they fly too close to an enemy broadside, burst into a mist of metal shrapnel, and you’ve gotta hit the boosters and get out of there, it’s informed by the visuals, the music, the feeling of speed you get. Even the feeling of succeeding at repairing a gun, extinguishing an engine, it’s all tied together the same way. It’s the feeling of sitting, watching a VHS tape of Gundam, or Dragon Ball Z, and seeing the coolest thing your 12 year old brain has ever seen in your life, and wishing you were those characters and their friends succeeding and failing, together. The ships, maps, characters, colors, speeds, sizes, and more all work to evoke those feelings. And they’re serving the same goal as the design, mechanics, and balance of the game.
Because that’s the heart of every Guns of Icarus game. That’s the heart of Stars of Icarus. Working with friends and with strangers, to keep your ship flying, together.
Hope that helped you get a feeling for what we’re trying to build and how we’re getting there! Now for me, I’ve got to get back to work finishing the game. See you all soon, be it on the Discord, on Steam, or hopefully soon in some playtests and betas!
See you in the stars,
Matthew, for the Muse Games team