Dean Hall's survival game Icarus recommends a whopping 32GB of RAM

Icarus, the sci-fi survival game being developed by Dean Hall's Rocketwerkz studio, isn't going to make its expected November release. But it'll be close: The studio announced today that the new launch date has been set for December 4.

The game was originally set to arrive in August, but was delayed a couple weeks ahead of that so developers could "give Icarus more love." In lieu of the launch, people who preordered were given access to a series of weekend betas, the last of which wrapped up on November 7.

"After three months of beta testing and feedback from one of the most engaged gamer communities I’ve ever seen, Icarus is ready for launch," Hall said.

"We believe the key to making a great survival game is listening to community feedback and being able to rapidly iterate. We deliberately built our architecture so we could add new items, missions, biomes, talents and balance changes each beta weekend and that’s something we plan to continue after launch too. Icarus will be a living, evolving game."

The launch date announcement also includes the finalized system requirements. The minimum spec is up there, but it's the recommended that really popped my eyes.

Minimum:

• OS: Windows 10 (64-bit versions)
• Processor: Intel Core i5 8400
• Memory: 16GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB
• DirectX: Version 11
• Network: Broadband internet connection
• Storage: 70GB available space

Recommended:

• OS: Windows 10 (64-bit versions)
• Processor: Intel Core i7 9700
• Memory: 32GB RAM 👀
• Graphics: Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti
• DirectX: Version 11
• Network: Broadband internet connection
• Storage: 70GB available space

That's an awfully high recommended spec. The RTX 3060 Ti is really up there (and almost impossible to find in stock right now) but it's the 32GB RAM recommendation really leaps out at me. I can't recall any recent PC game asking for that much RAM for optimal performance: The highest-spec recommendations for both Far Cry 6 and Outriders each had slightly higher CPU and GPU requirements, for instance, but only called for 16GB RAM. 

Hall said in an email sent to PC Gamer that Icarus "runs fine" with 16GB of RAM, but the studio wanted to future-proof the recommended requirement for a few years.

"Maybe we aimed a bit too high, but we didn't want to disappoint anyone either," Hall said. "Icarus is an open-world game with multiplayer so extra RAM helps, but the game has been optimized to work without it."

"Many people 'massage' their recommended specs. Our worlds are huge, and supporting high settings allows PC gamers to play with all the hardware they have. We picked recommended specs that work well, not recommended specs that sell the game, like publishers often do."

Our resident survival pro Chris Livingston has spent a little time with Icarus over the past year: His adventures included beating Dean Hall with a broom after he was set on fire, and picking an ill-advised fight with an angry polar bear. Sounds like a good time to me. You can find out more about Icarus at surviveicarus.com.