"I think me and survival games have some unfinished business," Dean Hall told me as we looked over the truly terrible, ramshackle wood hut I'd just built. We were standing beside a pristine river running through a forested valley, ringed by mountains cutting across a cloudless blue sky. This is the planet Icarus in the upcoming survival game of the same name from Hall's studio, Rocketwerkz, although it looks more like Yosemite National Park than an alien world.

Rocketwerkz recently gave GameSpot a chance to play about an hour of an early build of Icarus with Hall, the creator of DayZ. He showed off a bunch of the game's elements, including its tech tree, building capabilities, wildlife, and weather systems.

"I think there is an innate human understanding of the need to survive, and I think that that's a fascinating and under-looked-at area," Hall continued, explaining what keeps drawing him back to the survival genre. "I also think that a lot of people haven't taken it seriously because they haven't had the resources, and this is a real serious attempt--a long-term attempt to have an ability to build a survival platform where we can introduce different experiences while still linking you with this broad progression."

"I think me and survival games have some unfinished business," Dean Hall told me as we looked over the truly terrible, ramshackle wood hut I'd just built. We were standing beside a pristine river running through a forested valley, ringed by mountains cutting across a cloudless blue sky. This is the planet Icarus in the upcoming survival game of the same name from Hall's studio, Rocketwerkz, although it looks more like Yosemite National Park than an alien world.

Rocketwerkz recently gave GameSpot a chance to play about an hour of an early build of Icarus with Hall, the creator of DayZ. He showed off a bunch of the game's elements, including its tech tree, building capabilities, wildlife, and weather systems.

"I think there is an innate human understanding of the need to survive, and I think that that's a fascinating and under-looked-at area," Hall continued, explaining what keeps drawing him back to the survival genre. "I also think that a lot of people haven't taken it seriously because they haven't had the resources, and this is a real serious attempt--a long-term attempt to have an ability to build a survival platform where we can introduce different experiences while still linking you with this broad progression."