Death of a Game: Guns of Icarus Online

Video Sponsored by Ridge Wallet:
Use Code “NERDSLAYER” for 10% off your order

#DOAG . Death of a Game is a series dedicated to uncovering the mysteries surrounding the death of a game or company. nerdSlayer defines the term "death" in the context of the show as either... 1. Literally dead. 2. Had a mass exodus of players and never recovered (expectations etc). 3. The company ceased to exist. We follow a timeline of events, to uncover clues concerning why a game or company doesn't do well, and attempt to put it all together at the end for a deduction explaining how or why the game failed based on the evidence gathered.

[TheFerrett]

The big thing that killed it as a gaming group game for my friends was that everything that went wrong was blamed on the engineer.

[teddy]

Oof, everytime I see a game on here that I had a great time with, it hits a bit different

[TheDeadmanTT]

The player spikes in May 2013 and May 2015 were TotalBiscuits videos. I totally remember that.

[Larry]

I was with the MCN Maker Studios and they were making their youtube channels absolutely spam the hell out of Guns of Icarus (the publisher must have thrown shed loads of money at them), live streaming the game constantly. But the devs only wanted the "bigger channels" to promote it, no free keys for anyone else, so there was a lot of resentment from the smaller youtubers on Maker's cards, who ended up needlessly bashing the game for their "elitism".

[Minnan]

Some parts of the story are missing, such as the storm that hit the east coast during the development of alliance and flooded the Muse Games office building (they had to break in and take their equipment out to continue working).

If I recall, when they were looking for a publisher there was a Korean company that wanted to make it into a mobile mmo of sorts. I don't recall many of the details but it's from the postmortem one of the devs posted online.

[felipearias]

Honestly I loved playing the Engineer role, becuase not only was I playing a very fun version of wack-a-mole, I also had to conduct split dsecond triage decisions on the ship. And when the ship was not on fire and engines/baloon were operating, the engineer got to fire at the enemy ships. It was an incredibly fun role tbh.

[dogsarebetterthanrats]

I started playing Guns of Icarus Online when nerdSlayer put out the community post a few weeks ago announcing this was next and I was pleasantly surprised. There are times throughout a day where you can't get a match but the majority of the day there's a lobby going. The game uses a server browser and keeping this low population game playable is a real world and modern example of why developers should include a server browser. The community is amazingly friendly and welcoming helping me through all the basics and explaining anything to me that I asked about or I needed to do. Three weeks and thirty hours of play and I've not encountered a single toxic player.

In comparison to Sea of Thieves there's a set match loop here vs endless exploration in Sea of Thieves. You never leave the ship and the goal of the game is combat rather than exploration. The ship weapons have a lot more variety in Guns of Icarus and being an airship means ships move vertically too rather than being set on the flat surface of the sea. You don't have to set sails in Guns of Icarus either, you just repair components and shoot turrets. The appeal for a crewman is how chaotic it can get in the middle of combat trying to keep track of everything and prevent the ship from going down while trying to fight back or weasel away. You can also aim at and take out individual components of opponent ships which can take away elements of their movement or weapons.

Really cool game but I can understand why it never became a hyper-popular game.

[-Raylight]

I remember this game when the big gaming youtubers were playing this game
It was really fun game, but I guess it's hard to have fun with it without friends?

[TMek]

I loved the engineer class, there was even strategy to it since you had to use the right tools to counter the damage type. The biggest issue is that if an ally was trying to 'help' and used the wrong tool it'd usually screw you over and cause more problems.

[janc.]

I am a current active player of the game. We still host weekly events and we have an active competitive scene. If you want to get invested into the game you have all the resources and community support to do so. You just have to put a little effort into it to enjoy it. Join the discord, enquire about the events and best times to play, make friends and the road is straight for you to enjoy the game like you used to.

[archangel_avacyn]

I was literally pitching your channel to a friend the other day, and he asked if you had a Guns of Icarus video. Hours later you uploaded this. Get out of my head

[friendlyspacedragon]

That bit about the roles was real spot on. All I remember about GOI is running between components and hitting them with a hammer until victory screen comes up or the ship goes down.

[bananasean]

As a huge steam punk fan I wanted this to blow up but sadly it didn't.

[T.H.E.Smith_Boiiis]

You undersell how great this game is to play with friends. For my birthday each year all i ask from my family is a day of axis and allies for those within 3 hours and a day of guns of icarus for those too far to join us. It is to this day my favorite day or the year every year, even 12 years later.

[Aneppp]

I remember, I always go to TotalBiscuit's channel to decide whether to buy a game or not, I miss him. Rip TotalBiscuit.

[mugin]

I enjoyed watching Totalbiscuit and his crew playing Guns of Icarus back in the day. I couldn't get into GoI because it's something I would only want to play with and against friends, not randos.

[CrowMercury]

Wait so...their "fix" to the game that needed population to be banking was to make it as a separate game with double the cost? Not even a DLC so to unify the playerbase?

Why? They literally split their own playerbase!

[blenderboy]

I remeber that a bunch of youtubers played this game once, that was the first and last time I ever heard of this game 😂

[paulmacmillan]

Seeing the WTF Is? By Total Biscuit got my feelers going. It was his video that introduced me to the game.

[lilethedemondwolffoxcat]

The game has few players, but very active and close ones. If you want to go back or start playing the game, I recommend joining the discord and playing during the player-run events.