After a long wait, fans can expect Icarus: Console Edition to land on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles in Q1 2026. The console ports are being developed by Grip Studios, which has assisted in the development of Mafia: The Old Country, Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, and more. Of course, creator Dean Hall (DayZ) is also involved in the project.
The Best War Games recently spoke with Hall about these ports, as well as his legacy in the survival game genre. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Hall's Experience with the Icarus and the Genre
The Best War Games: You’ve often spoken about realism and challenge in survival games. What lessons from your DayZ days directly shaped how you approached Icarus?
If you want to immerse somebody in a survival experience, to feel like they are there, you need to ground it in a familiar situation first. That’s why in Icarus (and ICARUS: Console Edition), we purposefully start off with the earth-like terraformed areas before moving into the more alien. Unlike DayZ, we want the challenge level and tension to be constant, but not result in an unfair, instant death. The player should be able to judge and assess the risks and prepare accordingly.
The Best War Games: Icarus was initially pitched as a session-based survival game rather than an open-ended one. What drove that design choice, and how do you feel players responded to it?
We wanted to explore what happens when you make survival meaningful by putting time limits and risk into every decision. Session-based play forces prioritization: what do you take, what do you leave, what risks are worth it? It was definitely a departure from traditional open-world survival, and it challenged some expectations. Over time, though, we’ve listened to community feedback and given players more flexibility about how they would approach the game.
The Best War Games: The game has evolved significantly since launch, with new biomes, missions, and systems. Was that evolution part of the plan from day one, or did it grow organically from player feedback?
I think you get the best results from a balance of both. Ultimately, we’re guiding things based on our plan of where we want to take the experience, but since we have the benefit of a large community of highly engaged players who we have been lucky to have been able to push regular updates to quality of life, new tools and structures, and bug fixes, all with a reasonably fast turnaround. ICARUS: Console Edition benefits from several years of these updates.
Bringing Icarus to Consoles
The Best War Games: What were the biggest technical or design hurdles in bringing Icarus from PC to consoles?
One of the main reasons we held off on a console release for so long was our lack of confidence and experience in porting the mouse and keyboard complexity of the PC version over to a controller. GRIP Studios has done a fantastic job with this task, to the point where we’ll be looking at using their configuration to bring controller support to our PC version in the near future.
The Best War Games: Many survival games have to try and balance grind and reward. How do you walk the line between realism and fun so that Icarus feels punishing but not frustrating?
The struggle creates the reward—but, of course, where that line is is different for everyone. The talent tree in Icarus gives players the tools to pick the various ‘grinds’ in the game they’re not enjoying and specialize out of them. Whether the thing you enjoy the least is hunting, tree chopping, mining, or carrying resources around, there are talents to make all of them easier.
The Best War Games: Icarus has a strong co-op focus, but also a dedicated solo player base. How do you cater to both experiences without compromising the core gameplay loop?
Co-op and solo play are fundamentally different survival experiences. In groups, you can specialize; solo, you have to be self-sufficient. We’ve built talent options that let players tailor the challenge to their style. Every player should feel capable and have fun, whether they’re tackling storms alone or managing logistics with friends.
The Best War Games: Looking back to when the game first launched, how do you feel about its current reputation compared to those early impressions?
The early reception was mixed because we were doing something unique. But we listened to the community, kept improving week after week, and let the updates speak for themselves. Now, Icarus has grown into something that reflects both our original vision and the players who stuck with us.
Learning Lessons From Icarus
The Best War Games: You’ve taken some creative risks. How do you handle the weight of community expectations when those risks don’t immediately land?
By being honest. We show our process, admit when something doesn’t work, and fix it. Players don’t expect perfection; they expect integrity. I think that’s why our weekly updates and dev posts resonate. They know we are listening and improving in real time.
The Best War Games: If you could start Icarus again from scratch with everything you know now, what’s the one major thing you’d do differently?
Make open-world the core experience, with time-limited missions as an option, instead of the other way round. We still encounter players who could see the original vision and what it hoped to achieve—a fun, repeatable survival experience—but the bulk of players really just want to continue to invest time into a base they improve and refine and thanks to our years improving on that it’s where the game really shines.
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