(An Icarus Field Report, written with bitterness, splinters, and wolf saliva)
We did a couple of missions.
This is an important phrase. It sounds modest. Reasonable. Manageable.
It is, in hindsight, a lie.
Mission One: The Tutorial, or “Nine Minutes to Glory”
Mission brief:
Land on planet.
Pick up sticks.
Build a hut.
Make a bed.
Time investment: 9 minutes.
Reward: 50 credits.
We barely had time to emotionally bond with the sticks. The hut went up, the bed went down, and suddenly the mission was over. No wolves. No suffering. No existential dread. The game patted us gently on the head and awarded us Baby Steps (Complete the tutorial), which felt less like an achievement and more like a passive-aggressive reminder that we had successfully not eaten the controller.
We thought, foolishly, “Oh. This isn’t so bad.”
Mission Two: The One with the Ore, the Wolves, and the Horse Incident
Second mission: 225 credits.
Objective:
Land on planet.
Mine a huge amount of ore.
Put it in the delivery pod.
Simple. Clean. Deceptive.
This mission took over two hours.
Zaph did most of the mining, because Zaph is a machine. A tireless, methodical, laser-focused mining machine. Meanwhile, Craig and I ran around getting eaten by wolves, which felt less like a gameplay loop and more like a lifestyle choice.
At some point during this operation, Craig decided that what our carefully constructed hut really needed was… a horse.
Not outside the hut.
Not near the hut.
In the hut.
This was not a design choice. This was an omen.
We killed the horse.
(There is photographic evidence. See screenshot. History will judge us.)
The dead horse, apparently broadcasting on a frequency only wolves can hear, immediately attracted wolves. Wolves arrived. Wolves killed Craig. Wolves killed Dave.
I blame Craig.
We never had a wolf problem until Craig joined. This is not correlation. This is a law of nature.
The Mines That Lied to Us
There were two mines near the delivery pod. This felt promising. Hope bloomed.
They did not have enough ore.
This is where the mission quietly shifted genres—from “Survival Crafting” to “Endurance Running Simulator.” A lot of time was spent running around looking for new caves, each discovery accompanied by the hollow optimism of “Maybe this one?” followed shortly by “Nope. Still poor.”
And then there was gold.
Gold was the killer.
It took an hour to find the last gold we needed. An hour of caves, cliffs, scanning horizons, questioning life choices, and slowly realizing that the real resource being depleted wasn’t ore—it was morale.
Meanwhile, in the Alt World…
While all this was happening, progress occurred elsewhere, quietly and competently, like a different group playing a different game:
Zaph and Dave both achieved:
Highly Skilled (reach the bottom of a talent tree)
Engineering (alter an item)
These achievements happened without wolves. Without horses. Without Craig-related incidents. This feels relevant.
Conclusions, Recommendations, and Blame Assignment
We did succeed. Eventually.
The pod was filled. The mission was completed. The credits were earned.
But at what cost?
Suggestion for next Friday:
We start fresh on a world at normal difficulty, so we aren’t getting penalised 50% on mission rewards. This seems fair, reasonable, and in no way influenced by two hours of trauma mining gold while being stalked by wolves drawn to horse-based crimes.
In summary:
The tutorial lulled us into a false sense of competence.
Ore is plentiful until it isn’t.
Gold is a myth invented to waste time.
Wolves are attracted to Craig like heat-seeking missiles.
Bringing a horse into a hut is never the correct answer.
All that glitters is not gold.
Sometimes it’s just another cave, empty, mocking you quietly in the dark.
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