The replies from my last post had been overwhelming, and we are deeply humbled and moved by so many of the memories you shared. Thank you so much again for sharing them with us. They brought us back, and reminded us why it was all worth it. As promised, we collected every reply, and posted them here on the Guns Discord[discord.gg]. Here are also a few that we selected to share with everyone.

Lady Elektra —
A large amount of my online friends I met through this game and have kept very close with them all these years. I came into the game pretty early in PvP. My most memorable moments include streaming Crewcible matches and participating in faction politics as a Baronie leader. I remember a big gathering of all the faction leaders on discord to discuss the current alliances (Virna Convention). Even a few devs popped in to listen to the discourse.


Magy, O.G Choppy Crew —
i don't know if the people are still here but me and a bunch of people started a cult around the remote turret and nicknamed it choppy and then it appeared in the game.

fond memories


iggy perrish —
I would say this game influenced my career choice a lot, actually. I'm an engineer now and while I don't bonk flying engines and wear color coordinated outfits, I'm really proud of how this game influenced who I am today.


[flob] Toasterkin —
I am so thankful that the people here were supportive and patient with me when no one else in my life was. Thank you for showing kindness to an otherwise annoying kid. Now as an adult with friends and obligations (no more noon-6am videogame binges lol) I still look back fondly. I let people know this game and community were there for me before I had a stable support network. An edgier, younger me needed the kindness the playerbase gave, and I'm grateful for you and my time playing.


ZIOM5000 [ign - Katya Ironstead] —
I'm not eager to leave massive paragraphs as I doubt anybody cares all that much, but you got me feeling nostalgic, so I may as well throw something to the wind..

I've got maybe 260 hours total, far from a veteran, but I've been on this ride since around the time TotalBiscuit (miss you, legend..) and many others did paid promos of the game. I've been hooked since, though usually playing in small bursts throughout the years, often trying to rope some friends into joining me, but many of them not sticking around except for one other who developed a similar fondness for GoI that I have - both him and me are eagerly awaiting whatever you guys might have for us in the future. Not many games I keep returning to every once in a while no matter what, that's for sure.


looo aka Bourei —
After the wonderful news from the Muse Games team, I, a humble fan from Japan, wanted to share a few thoughts.

I can't understand spoken English well, and I'm sure I caused trouble now and then because of that.
Even so, almost everyone welcomed me and tried to communicate with me, even through my awkward and broken English.
Sometimes people even spoke to me in Japanese, and I was truly grateful for those moments.


UrsaPolaris —
This game was the first place where I found an online community. And the only game where I was invited into a guild to which I feel an allegiance to this day. I don't have any specific memories, just general good ones. Munker Mondays, weekday hangouts and plays. one tournament. @WATER inviting me to SMGS was however a bright spot in an otherwise dark personal time where I struggled on and off with depression and life more broadly. but being accepted and having fun with people when I otherwise felt very isolated helped me turn that around. I've looked back on my active time in Guns of Icarus very fondly, and still often miss it


Rồng Sông Rangeria —
Guns of Icarus was one of the first games i owned that I could actually run on my laptop when i was younger. Back then due to my family struggling and constantly moving for work I never got to stay in one place for very long, didn't give me time to make friends or keep them. At some point, i remember seeing this game on sale with a deal to buy a bunch of copies for a reduced price. I Bought the game for myself first, played it, and then bought 12 more copies which i kept in my steam library and would gift to people i made friends with who seemed interested in it as i jumped from state to state and school to school. Ended up making a lot of lifelong friends this way. The exact memories of any actual fights i did in it or entertaining stories are kinda murky memories now. Even now in my friend group, everyone, even those i didn't initially meet this way, still talks constantly about our love for this game and how much we once enjoyed it. Whenever we start playing new multiplayer games, or see something that reminds us of it, like Barotrauma, or that new game Sand, we are always talking about how it reminds us of Guns of Icarus.


Sutternalt —
I was working a 12-hr night shift factory job. It was a weird schedule; 2 days on, 2 off, 3 on, 3 off. I was depressed and had moved back in with my parents. It was my first night shift job ever, and I found myself sitting in the basement with nothing to do and nobody around (I really didn't vibe with the area). Eventually, I opened up GoI and poked around the multiplayer, remembering playing it with friends years ago. I actually reconnected with friends from college because of the game, and would play with them for a few hours in my "mornings". That, honestly, did a lot to start dragging me out of my very deep well of depression.

One day, I decide to keep playing with strangers from the internet. Some of my fondest memories from that time are meeting and playing with a bunch of Australians. Halfway across the world, halfway across the time of day, and still all of us screaming about surprise flamethrower squids from behind or trying to work out the best build for a mobula or being patient with me when I swore my all-shotgun Spire build named "Antiballoon" was actually amazing. It was amazing — mostly for the memories — but also there was a brief 3-week period where it absolutely dominated the skies. Then, something changed during a patch. I started a whole clan because of that thing. Not a big one, mind you, but I did.

Thanks for keeping me sane and connected both to my old friends and new Australians, Muse Games. Y'all are real ones.


Thanks everyone for all the years, all the memories, all the laughs, and all the banter. This game shaped our lives. It brings us a lot of pride and joy knowing that it meant and added a little bit of something to your lives as well. It was an honor to have shaped and shepherded it. It’s been lucky for us to tap into the mysterious forces of the universe to create this game, and we are so glad to have the opportunity to share it with everyone.

Soon, we hope to be making new memories with you, together, in the skies and beyond.

Until then, see you in our Discord[discord.gg]

- Howard for Team Muse

Just a quick note to let you all know that the Steam Wargaming Fest is coming to an end today at 10am PDT so if you’re looking to complete your Guns collection on Steam, now is the time.

We had an amazing time playing with everyone on Thursday and Friday, so keep an eye out for more events like that in the future. If you haven’t already, head over to our Discord server[discord.gg] as that’s where we tend to hang out and play some Guns!

Until next time,

- The Team at Muse Games

To commemorate Wargames Fest, we the devs are returning to the game. We’ll be in-game on Thursday, May 1st at 7:00 PM EDT and Friday, May 2nd at 3:00 PM EDT to play with everyone for a couple of hours. We’ll also bring back the old dev games tradition. If you play in a match with us, take a screenshot in the lobby, and you’ll get a code for an item of your choice.

To hang out with us during the dev session, head over to our Discord[discord.gg] where the event will take place. We’re looking forward to jumping back into the skies with old and new faces!

Then, take a screenshot of the end-game screen which shows you played with us, and post it in #WarGamesEvent in our Discord to receive any Muse-made item of your choice from the in-game market. Be sure to include your item choice with your post!

In-Spire-d makes a return just to be blown up? We’ll have to find out.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/209080/Guns_of_Icarus_Online/


- Howard for Team Muse

Seeing so many people across the years respond to our post, jumping back into the comments and the Guns Discord, with many little stories and moments shared, we felt really moved and nostalgic, so we wanted to gather some of these stories together for everyone.

If you have a fond memory, a funny story, or met a group of people that have been a part of your life while playing our games, we would love to hear them!

Drop them in the comments here or post them in the General chat in the Guns Discord[discord.gg]. We'll collect them all and share them with everyone.


Releasing a game that we’ve worked on for over 2 years should be a cause for joy and celebration. For us, it turned out to be the biggest crisis we’ve ever faced. Leading up to release, positive and supportive articles, previews, and videos by journalists and casters gave the game some momentum. Our Kickstarter backers and alpha/beta players were also incredible at helping us test, fix issues, and get the word out. Later in beta (when people could pre-order) and when the game went live, it reached #2 in Indie and #7 overall on Steam. I took a screenshot and savored for a brief moment. Then disaster struck, literally. Survival was once again on the line.

We had known that Hurricane Sandy was building, but we had no idea how devastating it would end up being. On the eve of the game’s launch, we found that out for ourselves first hand. As the game went live, most of NYC, NJ, and Connecticut’s power and internet were being knocked out, and there was severe flooding and debris falling everywhere. New York was not (and still isn’t) equipped to handle a hurricane, and the city was battered to a halt. There were no subway lines running, no buses or cars on the street. The wind shook buildings, and windows panes were falling away and shattering on the pavements. Cranes on buildings under construction were torn and dangling precariously. Trees fell, houses flooded and uprooted near the shores.

The area around our building was flooded, and we would end up having no power and internet in our space for almost a month. A month later, after the storm had passed, I went out to the Rockaways to volunteer. For miles, there would be nothing open, no electricity, and almost no activities of daily life. At a gas station, people would line up over 10 blocks or what seemed like a mile to get gas under army surveillance. At the volunteer station, we went through huge piles of various items of necessity, and it wasn’t enough. All this hit on the night we released the game.

Around release, we had a lot of players in-game, and a lot of them had very rough experiences. Servers were teetering and going down as the storm slammed our hosting company’s facilities. Steam’s servers that we used for authentication and voice were very unstable as well. Disconnections, match slowdowns, server overloading and hangups abounded. We had slow to no access to Steam’s dev portal as well as our site, so had a desperate time supporting players or even updating our Steam page info. We also had player reported issues with disconnections, crashes, frame drops, etc., that were new to us. The game released, and it was at or near the top of Steam’s charts. Yet, we had no time to do anything else but to buckle down and get to work. I was stressed out and wanted to freak out, but players were waiting and everything that could have gone wrong was going wrong, so there was really no time for that.

For the first week, because most of us had no internet or power for long stretches, we had to divide up the support roles. A couple of us who had internet were on player support, updating players on Steam forum, our forum, and in game for pretty much all our waking hours. The programmers were debugging and trying to divert traffic to server regions that were unaffected by the hurricane. One problem we had was that the build machine we were using to deploy builds was in our studio room, and the building was closed off by the NYPD, and submerged in one story of water. We had quite a few fixes that we urgently needed to commit and deploy. We mulled over our options, trying to figure out if we could deploy without the machine. If we couldn't, who should go in to retrieve it, and where could we relocate and set the machine up. One of our programmers decided to go because he knew what to get and knew the deploy code the best. He biked in, but our building was closed off. He was standing by while we haggled with the building security trying to talk our way in. Finally, he made it in, grabbed what we needed, ditched his bike (which was actually still there a day later), and rode an absolutely cramped bus to my apartment where I had power and internet working. For the rest of the day and night, he set up the build machine while I updated our status and supported players. The programmers made fixes and deployed while the rest of us then jumped on support. And while the servers were being overloaded, we were manually starting matches for people and in game helping people pretty much non-stop.

We probably had one of the most harrowing, stressful, and sleepless launch weeks ever, but we stuck together and fought through it. With conditions being as rough as it was, we lost players for certain. Some people had a rough time in the game and quit the game forever. But to see how supportive a lot of the players were was also very uplifting. We got a lot of nice posts on Steam like this one below:

First off I would like to congratulate you on releasing a great game; the gameplay, art, and music compliment each other incredibly well. Second off, wishing everybody is all right in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and hopefully the team is back at full force soon.

And they definitely motivated us to work hard for the players and to keep the game alive. Over the next few weeks, we would roll in patch after patch. Desperate times called for desperate measures. At least the players knew we were trying everything we could. We identified many issues to fix and things to improve on over the coming weeks and months, but our initial bond with our players was forged through a hurricane. Because of the support of our players and our community, we accomplished the most important thing in the early days of the game - not dying.


Thanks so much everyone!

- Howard for Team Muse

Greetings, captains and crews of the skies,

It’s been a long while since we’ve spoken to you here, and it’s about time we caught up. We, Muse Games, have grown up as a team. We’ve worked on and released multiple titles, and we are independent. So, what are we here to talk about? First of all, you.

The Guns of Icarus community have been with us for over a decade now. That’s incredibly humbling, and heartwarming for the entire team. To see you all still out there, flying in the skies we first created in Flight of the Icarus back in 2010 is amazing. So, firstly, we wanted to say, thank you.

Thank you for investing in our world, and thank you for helping shape and share the story we’ve all made together. Not many studios are as lucky to have a community as strong as the Guns of Icarus community, and we do not take that for granted.

We wanted to let you know that we’ve been working on something. Something we think you’re going to like. A lot. We’re going back to our roots. While we can’t tell you too much more at the moment, let’s just say that the sky is no longer the limit.

You’re going to be hearing a lot more from us in the coming weeks and months, so be sure to stick around and join us on Discord[discord.gg].

See you in the skies, and beyond…

Howard for Team Muse

This year we're celebrating our 10th birthday! 10 years of airships, rams, explosions, and friends.

To all the privateers, captains, and crew that have ever braved the skies over the wastelands, we want to thank you from the bottom of our souls for supporting us over the last decade.

A decade! Before we set out, we had a dream of making something that people hadn’t quite experienced before, but we certainly didn’t imagine that 10 years later, people would still be playing and supporting the game. Thank you for making our dream come true.

When we started, we had just been digging out a predatory publisher relationship, and we released Guns on the day of a category 3 hurricane. We honestly weren’t sure if we were going to make it or even be able to support the game. Many times I have had those life flashing before my eyes moments - servers blown up, DDoS’ed, hurricane, studio space burnt down, etc. Each time, we found strength and comfort in everyone’s support. All the interactions on forums and at conventions, all the late nights we spent with you in game, chit-chatting about life in the lobbies of Icarus, they mattered, and they kept us going.

When matches did start, it was amazing to see how much creativity and teamwork were possible, way beyond our imaginations and machinations. The thousands of feedback we worked on with you turned into close to 6.5M matches played, 24M ships destroyed, and 8.8B shots fired in the skies. These stats still look surreal to us.

In the last few years, we’ve had to shift our focus to create new game experiences such as Hamsterdam, Embr, and now Wildmender, in order to survive as a team and studio. We’ve handed the reins of game management to our interns, moderators, CAs, and dedicated players. We wanted to take a moment to thank them for all their support - Richard LeMoon, Portable Grump, Lysanya, Kajros, Loosepolygon, Alpha Sierra, Infinity Omelette, Delorum, Josie. Nerdhector, -Genesis, D.Strought, Zetnus, MaddBoi, Abby, Mr Trickery, Nedsvart, Sandy Hawkins, Tindwunnel, Frostbound, Teaco, Psi Crow, Saldarim, Bookkeepper, Krybon, Captainjan, Sprinkler, Ortagon, Chickenrun, Ambiorix, Coldcurse, FrozenHotSauce, Guras, Huskyneer, Mr.Moonwalker, Zyem, and others. We would not have gotten this far without you. Thank you for everything!

We made this game for you, and we’re so thankful that 10 years after release, we get to write this note. To more years in the skies!

To celebrate this improbably and special milestone, we're giving away a big pack of goodies, including:

• An exclusive new title
  
• A fancy dye + outfit bundle
  
• A crew loadout slot
  
• A ship loadout slot

Additionally, we are asking for your help to Wishlist our new project called Wildmender. For your support, we would like to offer an exclusive new themed outfit based on our new game, Wildmender. You’ll also receive a code to unlock a pair of exclusive hats in Wildmender once they’re ready!

Wildmender is our new project in development. It is an open world survival experience set in an arid world. You get to explore the land, cultivate an oasis, and bring the world slowly back to life.

On top of that, we’ll also enter you into a giveaway for one of these wonderful faction banners! These are one of a kind, so please tell us which one you’d like if you win. 4 banners, 4 lucky winners!

• Anglean Republic
  
• Mercantile Guild
  
• Fjord Baronies
  
• Order of Chaladon

Here’s the Steam page to wishlist:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1599330/Wildmender/

If you email us a screenshot of your Wildmender wishlist to feedback@musegames.com, we’ll send you a code for all of the items! This giveaway will end November 14th, 2022 at 12pm UTC
Happy Anniversary and happy Halloween!

The 10th Birthday Tournament is a semi-competitive tournament with single ship sign-ups. The matches will include Crazy King, King of the Hill, and Deathmatch.

The matches will be streamed starting at 7pm UTC on Sunday, October 30th.
The matches will be streamed by Fredrik Knudsen on our Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/musegamesnyc

- Team Muse

Game servers will be down from August 16th @10pm EDT until August 17th @10pm EDT.

See you in the skies when the servers are back up!

Build 2.0.20 (695) is live, it fixes several sound and video assets accidentally broken by our new build environment, including:

• Music
  
• Voice commands
  
• Intro videos
  
• VFX for several skills that relied on video data (such as the Salvo Neutralizer)

Big thanks to everyone who reported these bugs, and thanks for your patience while we fixed them!

It’s time to celebrate our 8th Anniversary! Update 2.0.20 features new customizables such as, hats, goggles, profile pictures, titles, and decals.

In celebration of this exciting milestone we’re holding an 8th Birthday Tournament! In preparation we have added lots of prizes for all the participants.
Catch the action on Saturday, October 24th at 6pm UTC over on http://twitch.tv/MuseGamesNYC.

• 8th Birthday Tournament Hat
  Given to all party guests from the 8th Birthday Tournament.
  
  
• 8th Birthday Decal
  Given to all party guests from the 8th Birthday Tournament.
  
  
• Birthday Boy & Birthday Girl titles
  
  • Awarded to the winners of the 8th Birthday Tournament.
• Party Goer title
  
  • Awarded to all participants of the 8th Birthday Tournament.

• Sir and Lady Pumpkinhead “goggles.”
  
  • Will be available during spooky Halloween missions.
    
  • Coming to the store in the future.
    
  • Probably cursed.
  It is a pumpkin and you put it on your head. Put a snazzy hat on top and hit the town.
  
  
• Mechanical Frontier Hat
  
  • Available in the store
  Nobody is quite sure how it works, or what it even does -- only that it brings good luck to those who venture into the wastelands wearing it, and that it is the most fuel-efficient hat out there.
  
  
• Roman Centurion Helmet
  
  • Available in the store.
  A helmet worn by Roman Centurions -- Roman military officers who held command of 100 Roman Legionaries. Many, many years and a few apocalyptic events later, some airship captains and crew wear these as a tribute to those ancient warriors. They’re also pretty practical as head protection in airship battles, too.

• SCS 300 1st place
  Awarded to the first place winners of SCS 300.
  
  
• SCS 300 2nd place
  Awarded to the second place winners of SCS 300.
  
  
• SCS 300 3rd place
  Awarded to the third place winners of SCS 300.
  
  
• SCS 300 Participant
  Awarded to the participants of SCS 300.
  
  
• SCS 300 Staff
  Awarded to the staff team behind SCS 300.
  
  
• The Fellowship of Steel
  Decal for The Steel Forge of Friendship
  
  
• The Overseer’s Eye
  Decal for The Steel Forge of Friendship

• 8 Ball
  An ancient device said to predict the future, bringing both good and bad fortune. Also good for 8th anniversaries.
  
  
• Birthday Gears
  Is it gears or a cake? No one knows. Submitted by Zetnus.
  
  
• Eight Shot
  8 shots for 8 years!

• Chaos D20
  From the Chaos Skirmish
  
  
• SCS 300 Gold
  Awarded to 1st place winners of SCS 300.
  
  
• SCS 300 Silver
  Awarded to 2nd place winners of SCS 300.
  
  
• SCS 300 Bronze
  Awarded to 3rd place winners of SCS 300.
  
  
• SCS 300 Ruby
  Awarded to Participants of SCS 300.
  
  
• SCS 300 Emerald
  Awarded to staff of SCS 300

• The Undaunted Admiral
  
• Inspiring Starbolin

• Boss Cluster Hades
  
  • Reduced cluster shot count to 6 (from 8)
    
  • Reduced velocity to 300 (from 400)
• Seraph Tempest Missiles [Mk. S]
  
  • Corrected typo and added submissile count in the description.

With our 8th birthday just around the corner, now is a great time to upgrade to Guns of Icarus Alliance!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/608800/Guns_of_Icarus_Alliance/
Whether you're looking for a place to play solo, or just looking to try out PvE, Guns of Icarus Alliance has you covered!

Sale ends September 27th.