Hey everyone!
The day is finally here - IKARUS is officially out in Steam Early Access!
We’ve poured everything into this massive update to crack the game wide open. If you played our previous demo, you already know we’ve been highly focused on making the game feel faster, punchier, and intensely rewarding. Now, we're taking the mashup of classic arcade shoot 'em ups and roguelite deck-building to a whole new level.
Here is a taste of what’s waiting for you in today's launch:
An Enormous Arsenal: Build game-breaking synergies with 70 unique cards, 45 augments, and 25 weapon upgrades across 3 distinct archetypes (Architect, Berserker, and Catalyst).
Two Brand-New Levels: Push far beyond the demo with completely fresh stages packed with unseen enemy variants, intense mini-bosses, and two epic new level bosses to test your mettle.
More Lasers & Critical Combos: We completely replaced cannons with lasers because they are simply great fun (keep an eye out for the new echo laser!). Plus, critical hit chances now apply to lasers, grenades, slashes, and strikes, opening the door for wildly powerful new build paths.
Expanded Boon vs Burden System: Adjust the difficulty with 10+ Boons and Burdens to refine your runs and secure huge score multipliers for the leaderboards.
Challenging Steam Achievements: Prove your mastery with full achievement support. Try completing a run with 3 Burdens active, or pulling off the ultimate combo by inflicting an enemy with mark, shock, and ignite simultaneously!
Player-Requested Features & Polish: We’ve added FPS limit options, an upgraded standalone weapon shop, tweaked starting combat styles, and sweeping audio/visual improvements across the board.
The Road Ahead: Today is a massive milestone for us as a two-person team, but this is where the real fun begins. From here on out, we are planning to put out regular updates. You can expect ongoing polish and balance tweaks to keep the gameplay tight, but we are also bringing a ton of entirely new content - including fresh cards, new upgrades and expanded gameplay features (such as an escalating Ascension difficulty system for those of you looking for a truly brutal challenge).
We Need Your Feedback! Early Access is all about building the game together. Have you found an incredibly broken card synergy? Is a particular boss giving you far too hard a time? Do you have ideas for new cards, augments or features? We want to hear all of it.
Please drop your thoughts, ideas, and feedback over in the Steam Discussions. We read everything, and it helps us figure out what to prioritise next!
If you want to chat directly with us, give feedback, share your most chaotic builds, or just hang out with the rest of the community, we would absolutely love to see you in our Discord server:
Thank you so much for all the support getting us to this point. Jump in, build some crazy decks, and we’ll see you on the leaderboards!
Magical Something (Sam and Dan)
BlueSky: @magical-something.bsky.social
TikTok: @magicalsomething