Stars of Icarus Preview – Out with steampunk, in with space

Steampunk is, let’s face it, old hat now. Specifically, it’s a top hat with goggles, some cogs and maybe a timepiece or two on it. But space? Well, space is always going to be filled with wonder and cool. So it makes total sense that Muse Games would look to the stars for their successor to Guns of Icarus, the aptly titled Stars of Icarus.

Of course, while people might dream of the smooth utopian future of 90s Star Trek, the likely reality of space travel is going to be much grimier and difficult. Stars of Icarus sees crews of ragtag spacefarers battling over scraps, facing off in abandoned scrapyard, space stations and around asteroid belts for the right to whatever spoils might be had.

Two teams of five players face off in combat, but the spaceships that you can pilot can accommodate between one and three people. A single-person ship is going to be small and nimble, a little fighter that can move quickly, but it won’t have anything when compared to the multiple turrets of a two-seater corvette, or the thick shields, gun batteries and sheer survivability of a three-seater frigate.

Coordinating your efforts works on multiple levels, both in terms of ensuring that your ships stay together and can support one another, taking a tactical approach to engaging the enemy, but also within a ship. In a corvette, one person has to pilot, manoeuvring the ship with an eye on what the enemy is doing and facing them with the particular guns that are available, not to mention turning away from incoming fire if part of the shields are breached. Meanwhile, the other crew member can dash back and forth between weapons, unloading their ammo and then switching to another point, repairing components as they take damage, and deciding where to put the one AI helper – put them on a particular gun battery and they’ll keep blasting away at anything in sight with decent efficiency.

It’s really satisfying to have it all come together. I enjoyed playing in a solo fighter, the mouse and keyboard controls reminding me of trying to play classic X-Wing and TIE Fighter games in the early 90s without a flight stick… but this game’s meant for these inputs. But I also really enjoyed playing as a crewer in a corvette or frigate, scrambling back and forth between fixing and firing. The one time I tried to pilot a corvette… well, let’s just say I wasn’t really taking the 6DOF field of battle into account very well, and angling the ship to bring guns to bear took a lot of brain power for a newcomer. By comparison, the team at Muse were dab hands at quickly rotating the ship between long-ranged and short-range turrets.

But fans and veterans from Guns of Icarus should take to this much more quickly, though with the new rotational factor coming into play a lot more, adding to the verticality of the game’s combat.

Of course, the ships can be extensively customised with different gun loadouts and gear, so you can have a short-ranged bruiser or a powerful long-ranged sniper style of ship, or perhaps put a repair beam on a corvette so that you can fall back, regroup and go again much more easily. That opens up plenty of tactical variety, especially when combining with the environments, where you could drop down into some cosmic fog, use constructs to block views and approach angles, laying traps or springing them to get an advantage.

Muse Games took inspiration from 90s anime for Stars of Icarus’ art direction, so there’s cel shaded characters and ships, bright block colours and chunky ship designs. In combat, it helps things to read quite well, keeping the visuals relatively uncluttered. It also lends itself well to quick character customisation with colour palettes. As a premium game, Stars of Icarus will have all the ships, tools and weapons unlocked from the start, and a healthy selection of customisation options… though more cosmetics will feature in an in-game store. Sometimes you got to show off, right?

And that sometimes could be in the in-game lobby, a gathering place to run around with your anime-styled avatar and hang out with other community members. Muse hopes that much of the sense of community that they found with Guns of Icarus can carry through to Stars of Icarus as well when it launches in 2026.