After backing this on Kickstarter, I was excited to finally get it, and it did not disappoint. I was excited to see that S&S added archetypes to existing classes rather than just creating all new classes, and so it still feels like D&D. The game mechanics are fantastic, adding material that can be used in the S&S setting OR your own setting with optional rules designed to make the game as "super" as you want.

The setting is also excellent comic-book fare, filled with the sorts of organizations and complications that flavor the best comic universes. And there's numerous campaign and adventure hooks in the book to help you figure out a great Supers game in the setting.

All in all, this is a great book for people who love comics and supers or even just love to collect 5e rules options.

So, I decided to try Icarus out with my regular gaming group after seeing Dicebreaker's review online, and purchased the digital version as the physical version was out of stock everywhere. I printed the cards on cardstock, and used an assortment of 16mm round-cornered dice that I had in my possession, as per the recommendation.

We used one of the scenarios in the rulebook as our starting point -- "The Holy Jungle". Our city of Icarus was built on the base of a cliff at the edge of the jungle, with advanced hydraulic power for our otherwise Neolithic society. Our civilization was based on water, abundance, and obsessive cleanliness. However, an "outcaste" of people who were responsible for handling the filth and waste of our city had a festival to the Mud spirit, which began a cascading set of problems and social unrest. As we focused on solving this domestic crisis, our monopolization of the water upset our neighbors, and in the end, we were overrun by our neighbors just as it appeared we'd solved our internal disputes. Icarus endured a brutal sack, only ended as the outcaste "Mud People" seized control and restored order to what remained of our ruined and broken city.

We had a great time going through the event prompts and shaping the city, and deciding how our various Pillars of society would focus their efforts trying to address the problems. Our Energy pillar had the motivation to bring down Icarus, and ultimately worked in two interesting ways: Pushing the hydraulic energy system past its safe limits, and scheming to discredit the other Pillars. He also brought down our Safety Pillar by revealing his solicitation of bribes (he had the "Get Rich" motive), which led to a ritual humiliation involving dirt and filth, pushing our Safety minister into the waiting arms of the Mud People.

I highly recommend this game to any group that has an occasional night where you need a break from the ongoing game. The wide-open nature of the game is such that you should never have anything close to the same story twice. Certainly, I don't think any of you will end up with the Glorius Mud Revolution. It was easy to play, easy to explain, and is highly replayable.

I'd recommend you spring for the pre-printed cards, if you can afford it. I printed my own cards, and the print-and-play cards didn't line up very well for 2-sided printing (not sure if this was my printer or the PDF), so I wound up with folded cards instead. You'll want about 20-30 dice and a relatively stable surface to play on. You'll also want a lot of index cards or notepads for writing aspects. You'll also weant to figure out a good way to keep aspects straight -- we wound up with a nearly unmanageable pile, and occasionally had to stop to find aspects we wanted to address.

Also, a quick note: the game is designed for 2-5 players, but we had 6. The only real limitation to 5 is the number of motive cards (also 5). I hot-patched the game by printing an extra copy of one of the motivations and adding it to the deck. If the makers of this game ever decide to do an expansion to the game, adding extra motives to support more players would be a good place to start.