I recently had the pleasure of spending an hour or so playing "Icarus," an upcoming survival game from New Zealand developer RocketWerkz. It was the studio's founder, Dean Hall (formerly of Bohemia Interactive and DayZ), who gave me the lowdown on my first steps on an alien planet.

During the session, Hall took me through the early stages of survival on the planet Icarus. Gathering resources, unlocking recipes, making tools, and inevitably chopping down trees. As I chopped down the first tree, Hall told me, "Don't let it fall on anyone."

Since our minds naturally turn to Valheim when it comes to dangerous fallen trees these days, I asked Hall if he and the RocketWerkz team play the popular Viking survival game.

"Um... A lot of Valheim," Hall said. 'A lot. I'm very happy with the way this game has been introduced into the survival game. [Valheim was mentioned several times during the session, which makes sense since both games take place in a vast open world where you have to hunt deer, build bases, take dangerous expeditions into the wilderness, and worry about trees falling over.

"The player story we're trying to create in 'Icarus' is that you actually go in and survive, but in 'Valheim,' you realize how important feeling is in everything," Hall said.

At the same time, Hall emphasized that the Icarus map is handcrafted with procedural elements, as opposed to Valheim, which is a completely procedural map." We really wanted people to have a real sense of exploration and a sense that everywhere is different," he said.

"One of the challenges with procedural generation is that once you visit one (type of) biome, it's like you've visited the whole biome. So by authoring the maps by hand, we wanted to make it feel like you were actually exploring."

We also discussed another survival game, "Ark: Survival Evolved," which Hall said he is a fan of playing solo. Making "Icarus" a cooperative game that can be played by one person was very important to RocketWerkz, Hall said. One of our pillars was that it be fun to play alone," Hall said. That was one of our first pillars, and that's how I used to play 'Ark'"

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Hall also hopes that the Icarus story involving the failed terraforming process related in the live-action lore trailer will appeal to players as well.

"Like Ark, Valheim, and Icarus, I love the really zen aspect of being able to actually explore the story of a world I don't know well, as opposed to just building a hut and surviving or going deer hunting. It's like [the story] takes you to a familiar place, but actually gently pulls you into a whole other world." That's what I was really looking for in a survival game, and that's what we're doing here.