Survival game Icarus launched back in December of 2021, and since then developer RocketWerkz has not been sitting idle. The studio has delivered an impressive number of small updates, missions, and tweaks to Icarus every single week, along with bigger expansions and features along the way.
While it's been a minute since I've played Icarus, the latest update immediately solidified my weekend plans. Sorry, Diablo 4, your demons are gonna have to wait. I'm going fishing on planet Icarus.
The new update, called Galileo, adds a robust fishing system to the planetary survival game, including three types of fishing rods, 23 lures, fishing traps, and 53 different species of fish to catch in its lakes, rivers, and ponds. That's a lot of fish. Challenge accepted.
All that new gear requires a new crafting table, the fishing bench, which in itself is exciting because who doesn't like having an entirely new crafting bench in their mountain lodge? You'll find different fish in different bodies of water, so if you want to get truly Pokémon and catch 'em all you're going to have to do some exploring. Fishing itself, as you can see in the trailer above, is handled by a little minigame where you try to keep the fish in the "golden zone" of the fishing meter, similar to the fishing minigame in Stardew Valley, for instance. Different craftable lures can increase your chances of making a catch.
Every fish you catch is entered into the fishing record in Icarus's new bestiary, which is another part of the Galileo update and tracks not just fish but all of the creatures to meet, hunt, kill, and get killed by in Icarus. The fishing record will also keep track of how many of each fish you've caught and stats like quality, weight, and length. And if you don't feel like using a rod and playing a minigame to collect fish, there are also craftable fishing traps you can plop into a body of water. The downside to this approach is it'll take a lot longer and you'll also collect a bunch of junk.
Once you've got some fish you can slice them up and cook them for food, mount them on your wall as trophies, and even display them in aquariums at your base. I haven't cast a line yet, but this all sounds like an enjoyable new activity for Icarus. Along with everything else, Icarus now has achievements and trading cards, plus a bunch of balance changes, an increase in level cap, and more you can read about in the full patch notes.
