Guns of Icarus Online
Guns of Icarus Online is the original PvP steampunk airship combat game that laid the groundwork for the expanded Guns of Icarus experience, Guns of Icarus Alliance. Slip the surly bonds of earth and take to the skies as a bold Captain, fearless Gunner, or cunning Engineer. Raising the stakes on team-based PvP combat with an emphasis on strategic competition and team play, Guns of Icarus Online is all about teamwork, tactics, and fast-paced action. With a good ship and the right crew, you can conquer the skies!
- A vivid steampunk world Lumbering, heavily-armored airships bristling with guns patrol the skies above a land ravaged beyond repair by an out-of-control industrial revolution.
- Build your own airship Starting from a selection of basic hulls, players can mix and match hundreds of custom parts to create their own unique airship, then assemble a crew to fly it.
- Your ship is your life Your ship is your collective life bar – when the ship goes down, the crew goes down with it. Every member of the crew plays an integral role in not only maintaining the integrity – “life” – of the ship, but also weakening the integrity of enemy ships as they work cooperatively towards a shared victory.
- The ultimate multiplayer team experience You won’t be told to stay still and not die while a veteran preserves their Kill/Death ratio. In Guns of Icarus Online, you have to work together. It’s an entirely interdependent gameplay experience that cannot be won by a single crew member.
- Goggles, gears, and glory A wide range of costumes and cosmetic options to show off your style are available in the in-game store. These items are cosmetic only – there is no pay-to-win in Guns of Icarus Online.
- Pit crew against crew Form a party with up to 4 friends and crew a ship together to battle against other teams in massive airship battles with up to 32 players in a match with multiple game modes including Deathmatch, King of the Hill, Crazy King, Skyball, and VIP.
- Rise in the ranks Earn titles and cosmetic upgrades through your achievements. Balanced, competitive matches reward strategic, skillful play, not level grinding.
The Industrial Revolution never ended. Raging out of control, the new machines consumed the world, staining the sky, scouring the land and poisoning the water. Humanity came the brink of extinction, all but destroyed by their own unrestrained ingenuity. A few pockets of civilization survived, sheltering in the crevices of the world, and it is time for a comeback.
Divided by wide expanses of toxic wasteland, a handful of these remnants have developed airship technology. Cruising through the sky, safely away from the poisoned earth, trade and industry could finally begin anew. However, with resources so desperately limited, war was inevitable.We are Muse Games, an independent studio based out of New York City. Our debut game, Flight of the Icarus, was the seed that would later grow into our flagship title. After releasing the unique and eye-catching platform game CreaVures in 2011, we dedicated ourselves to re-engineering our debut title into a fully-featured cooperative online airship combat game.
We released Guns of Icarus Online in October 2012, right in the midst of Hurricane Sandy. Despite that challenging start, the game earned a loyal audience and built up a healthy community, passing the million player mark in January 2016. Since then, we have remained committed to supporting and expanding the Guns of Icarus experience. What was originally intended to be an expansion that would introduce AI opponents and player-vs-environment gameplay grew into a new standalone game – Guns of Icarus Alliance, the ultimate and definitive Guns of Icarus experience – which released in March 2017.
Steam User 102
I will never forget you.
Steam User 99
people will never know that this was the most fun game of all time.
Steam User 45
This game didn't deserve to die. There's nothing quite like it.
Steam User 55
This game deserves a Remaster!
Steam User 46
Truly a great game. Its a shame the player base died out
Steam User 46
RIP
Didn't appreciate when I could
Steam User 31
I have a strange story about this game, but to tell it requires me to explain the way I play this game: I don't. I don't actually play it. All of my character classes have 0:00:00 playtime, I have a record of 0 wins and 0 losses, and a 100% match completion rate achieved by having never entered a match. I imagine I got the achievement for "jumping once" from one of the tutorials, but that was so long ago (2014!), I don't even remember what the tutorial consisted of, or if I even finished it. Yet here I am, level 19 on all classes after having accrued 15-and-a-half hours of playtime over the course of nine years.
You see, back in December of 2014, I installed Guns of Icarus Online, possibly played a tutorial, and promptly started doing something else with my time. Fast forward to 2022 and an update in my news feed mentioned free cosmetics for wishlisting Muse Games' upcoming release. I log in to redeem my new swag, spend half an hour messing around with the character customizer... And notice the signin bonus in the bottom-right corner. There's nothing new about a game rewarding you for checking in; it's been a common means of user retention since the age of Neopets! But upon seeing I got character experience for logging in, feeling the familiar dopamine rush of seeing Numbers Go Up, I thought to myself, Wouldn't it be funny if I maxed everything out without ever playing the actual game?
So began one man's quest to see what the biggest number is.
That number turned out to be about 30,000. Almost a year into my adventure, I was at the maximum amount of gold a player can have, meaning I could either ignore it and let any incoming gold go to waste, or learn how to interact with the menus in a way that wasn't customizing my profile or playing dress up. I had no idea what gold was actually used for (even now I'm still not entirely sure), but I remember I'd joined a faction called the Anglean Republic, and vaguely recalled the map mentioning gold.
Paydirt! A few clicks and I was treated to a map of the world of Guns of Icarus, color-coded to show which faction owned each region. I was coming dangerously close to actually playing the game, but I knew that I would regret it if I let all that gold go to waste. Besides, my faction had unknowingly been host to a deadbeat this entire time, and some of faction leader memos had been fun; maybe spending all this money on the war effort would help repay them! So I clicked on regions mentioned in the latest memo, buying all the upgrades I could before the game stopped letting me and forced me to upgrade somewhere else. Maybe we won the battles in those territories? I'll never know for sure. But by the end of it all, I had 10 new achievements, an empty bank account, and the warm feeling that comes from doing good and expecting nothing in return.
Three days later, I was made Faction Leader.
The day started normally enough, logging in just in case I forgot to do so the night before, my weary mind struggling to understand what was happening in front of me. A couple new achievements pop and I'm slammed into the most unexpected rise to power since King Ralph. It turns out that a new faction leader is picked every four days based on how much they contributed to that faction, and my sudden funding injection had sealed my fate. I would have to find some way to abdicate, but how? I'd no experience in navigating the menus of the game. There was a Discord server for the faction, and everything I'd ever heard said that the community around Guns of Icarus was lovely, but I dreaded actual human interaction; talking to other people would be even worse than playing with them! No, I had to do this alone.
Breathing heavily, my shaking hands charted a circuitous course to the Faction tab; unfamiliar with the game's layout as I was, I must have taken two, maybe three clicks before coming face to face with the source of my agony: The Candidates board, and the thousands of points earned in my ill-fated spending spree. And with one final click...
Honestly, abdicating was pretty easy. I'm not sure why I got so worked up about it, but all of what happened works into whether or not I would recommend this game: Absolutely. Not because of the gameplay, which I have no real experience with. Not because of the community, who I'm sure would have helped me if I'd asked but, again, who I have avoided for almost nine years. What makes me recommend Guns of Icarus Online is that I've been allowed to interact with it on my own terms, and to find my own fun in it, even if that fun is collecting daily rewards, changing the color of my armor, then panicking when I become leader of an army of flying technocratic Norsemen.
I am allowed to do this, and hope to continue doing so for many years to come.