Over the weekend I had the chance to table a session of Icarus (2019), a storytelling game written by Spenser Starke (of Alice is Missing and Candela Obscura fame) and released by Hunters Entertainment and Renegade Games Studios.
I was blessed to find an unopened copy at a thrift store going for 25 SGD (19.5 USD) in mid-2024, and I proceeded to bury it like a squirrel with an acorn, until such a serendipitous social gathering, bringing along an urge to play something new, prep lite and roleplaying-ey. I’m glad I played Icarus with my friends because it was a pretty good time!
Quick overview of the game
The players at the table collectively tell the story of a fictional civilisation of people known as Icarus, describing how the city rises to power and inevitably falls to ruin. Each player creates a character who governs or heavily influences a particular pillar of society (religion, energy, agriculture etc), and each with their own specific motivation.
Players then take turns to respond to issues that pop up in the city by describing a scene. Other players may support that same cause or respond to other issues. Eventually dice will be rolled to see if the characters succeed in enacting their changes to Icarus. For failed rolls, dice are added to a stacked tower of dice, and when the tower finally topples, it symbolises the collapse of the once great Icarus and the game concludes.
Here’s my first impressions:
The Components
The game comes in a medium sized box that would fit nicely on a bookshelf. Inside are a pack of custom cards, a memo pad, a slim 40- page rules booklet, and a set of 20 chunky white dice. Juxtaposed against the creamy premium dice is a sad cardboard insert just trying its utmost best.
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| Check out civilisation and these contents! |
The Rules
Considering that I had chosen to run this game on a whim (“I brought a new game, would you guys like to try it?” / ”Sure!” / ”Awesome! give me 15 mins to read the rules”) the game isn’t too hard to run. It does what it says on the box, promising a GM-less storytelling game that lasts about 2 hours.
That said, I did meet some friction while trying to understand the rules and set up the game. The set-up of the cards was initially frustrating as the Story Deck cards are split into three long and descriptive sub-headers. These sub- headers are on the front of the card instead of the back, which makes them hard to initially differentiate. I eventually figured out the iconography on the card back, but I wish that this was better explained in the rules booklet.
The game rules could also be better written. I found the concept of Aspects to be especially vague and hard to wrap my head around. Aspects eventually become something to understand more intuitively as you play the game (and to me probably the most brilliant mechanic in this game), but I did wish the rules had more explication.
There were a few edge rules that I wish were addressed in the FAQ:
- For dice that you have succeeded in rolling. Do they stay on the Aspect or return to the box? (we eventually just returned them)
- There’s a table on the last page of the booklet for the game that I assume you would have to use if playing the game without wanting to stack dice? From what I know it’s not really explained anywhere in the rulebook.
- Where can we find additional scenarios for Icarus if we run out of scenarios to play in the rules booklet? (I googled a bit and found an additional supplement on DriveThruRPG for 1USD. Would be awesome to see more player contributed content too!)
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| Stacking dice has been the bad habit of every bored player waiting for their turn at the table. Glad to see it incorporated into a game for thematic effect. |
Influences
Even as I was learning how to play Icarus, it was hard for me not to make comparisons between this game and a few others. Most notably Dialect (Thorny Games, 2016), which I feel Icarus shares so much DNA with, that I’ve taken to market this game to my friends as “Dialect but with the language component filed off”. There are also murmurings of Fiasco (Bully Pulpit Games, 2009) in the dice play/ scene framing mechanics of the game, and ofc the toppling tower of dice draws some parallels to the Jenga tower in the horror RPG Dread (The Impossible Dream, 2005).
I don’t mean to bring up these influences to disparage Icarus. Quite the opposite. I think it’s a good remixing of great parts of great games, and in some ways Icarus succeeds in solving the challenges posed by the design of those games that came before it.
I love the ambition of Dialect, allowing players to collectively invent their own glossary of fictional wordswords as they play out the rise and fall of an isolated community of people. It’s very clever, but can be too alienating or overwrought in the same cleverness and ambition. I find that my games of Dialect tend to drag out due players trying to handle its procedures. Also with the invention of words, there is quite a huge demand on players to have to roleplay scenes to use these new coinages.
Fiasco is similarly very smart in the way it uses playbooks and mechanics to juggle creating a Coen brothers style story. But even more so than Dialect, the game places a huge emphasis on roleplaying for the game to really shine.
Icarus blithely does away with the absolute need for roleplay, by stating that it’s more of a storytelling game, and that characters and scenarios can be acted out or described in third person. We can liken Icarus to be an almost top- down city simulator equivalent of an RPG (minus all the crunch that is often associated with those videogames). I find that this 3rd person psychic distance is quite a good spot for newer players or for players who might have difficulties really immersing into roleplay. The 3rd person pov also fits the theme of playing leaders literally building high towers and being detached from the ground. My friends and I took quickly to the game’s affinity towards simulating paper pushing bureaucrats. Is it pertinent at this point to mention that all the players at the table including myself are Singaporeans?
Of course you can still go for roleplay in Icarus, and it can enhance the experience by significant degrees. But the omniscient perspective definitely frees things up for players and makes the game more accessible. This is probably Icarus’ greatest strength.
Art
I find Icarus’ art to be its weakest point . The box art of men in suits plummeting doesn’t accurately portray the city building/ toppling aspects of the game that to me is the core of the game. My guess is that the art is meant to harken to the eponymous Icarus of Greek myth, and also soften the impression that potential players would otherwise have of the game, compared to say— a visual of a toppled statue a la Ozymandias—, even if it’s probably more relevant.
The other illustrations inside the game (booklet and cards) just suffice. I acknowledge it’s difficult because this game allows you to play across any genre, and it can be hard to unify vastly different works of art and make it look unified. Also the illustrations have to be descriptive yet generic enough for players to project their ideas upon the game. The game has these challenges to juggle in terms of its art design, and it just does an alright job.
Conclusion
All in all, I enjoyed Icarus, and I’m glad I picked it up. I foresee myself tabling it quite a few more times with most of my friends, even those not too huge on roleplaying games. I think it would not have been worth the cost at full price back in the day (USD 35) , but as of this post, the game appears to be on sale on the Renegade Studios Webstore. Also the PDF is at a pretty good price though the dice and cards might be worth picking up the physical game for.
A game worth picking up at a bargain, and I would welcome a 2nd edition with a tighter redesign, some rewrites and additional content.
*Thanks for reading my post. I am not affiliated with any of the links or games that are mentioned in this post.*
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