Iconoclasts (2018)

Iconoclasts is a vibrant 2D action-platformer created almost entirely by solo developer, critics widely praised its stunning pixel art, fluid animations, and expressive characters, noting that it feels like a modern take on classic SNES aesthetics. The gameplay blends puzzle-platforming with inventive boss battles that often require both skill and problem-solving, keeping the action fresh and engaging throughout. It is not a particularly challenging game for people used to this genre, but I can see people not familiar with this having a hard time.

The story, which touches on themes of religion, authority, and personal identity, was seen as one of the game’s strongest aspects. Many people highlighted how emotionally grounded the characters felt and how the narrative added weight to the otherwise light-hearted visual style. That said, some players and critics felt that the dialogue could be overly long or heavy-handed, slowing the pacing at times, so keep this in mind if you are not a fan of dialog-heavy titles.

Mechanically, the game offers tight platforming and enjoyable progression, though it is more linear than most Metroidvania titles. It's exploration is one of the most satisfying ones that I've ever played, not at the same level of something like SOTN, but it gets close enough by it's scope. The “Tweak” upgrade system was considered underdeveloped by some, since it provided only modest gameplay variety and broke easily in combat. Similarly, combat itself was sometimes criticized for feeling imprecise compared to the game’s excellent puzzles and exploration sequences, overall these mechanics are not bad, but due to it's indie nature, they are indeed more limited.

Overall, Iconoclasts was celebrated as a standout indie release of 2018, while not perfect in terms of depth or exploration, it impressed with its artistry, memorable story, and clever design. It is a memorable experience through all of it's features, mechanics and all the idea it is trying to convey, there is no aspect I can think of that is not very well implemented. If you like pixel-art alone, this one is a must-play, I also recommend this for fans of metroidvanias since it's exploration is very good.

Iconoclasts is an indie-darling created by sole developer, Joakim "Konjak" Sandberg. It is a metroid-vania inspired game that features excellent sprite and animation work. The game offers clever puzzles, an impressive variety of boss fights and a surprisingly deep and dark story. Unfortunately Iconoclasts falters with other elements. The Tweaks upgrade mechanic is underutilized. Combat outside of boss fights is not exciting. And the storytelling is poor and convoluted.

Robin is an unlicensed mechanic residing in Settlement 17. She and her fellow inhabitants live under a religious totalitarian organization known as the One Concern. Practicing engineering without their approval, results in a Penance, where the perpetrator is executed and their home is demolished. Despite these risks, Robin decides to continue practicing to follow in her father’s footsteps. She is caught by the Agents of One Concern repairing her brother’s house and is promptly imprisoned. Fortunately, Robin is jailed along with an Isi woman named Mina who helps her escape. Robin and Mina go on a wild adventure, fleeing from the One Concern, whilst investigating the frequent tremors across the land, the mysterious powers of Ivory and One Concern’s true objective.

Robin’s base equipment is a wrench and ranged stun gun. Her wrench is a video game Swiss army knife. She can use it as a melee weapon, to open or activate various switches and doors, to hang on to elevated bolts, parry ranged attacks and generate electricity by twirling it around. Robin’s stun gun in the meanwhile, is less impressive, outside of doing a charged shot to blast away barriers, the stun gun is Robin’s only direct ranged attack for the majority of the game. Iconoclasts breaks with the usual formula of metroid-vanias in that it is not a combat heavy game. Most rooms involve some puzzle and platforming element where players have to guide Robin to turn various knobs or swing across chasms. Bosses have The Legend of Zelda-like charm to them where they are puzzles in themselves and Robin will usually have to do something to expose their weaknesses.

Iconoclasts introduces a Tweak system that doesn’t feel very well thought out. Throughout the world, Robin can collect materials recovered from chests that can be crafted into Tweaks. Tweaks grant minor boosts to Robin’s kit, such as Iron Heart which nullifies a single hit or Fleet Foot which increases movement speed. She can equip three Tweaks at a time and getting hit removes the right most Tweak. To recover them, Robin has to damage enemies or break statues. Due to the nature of how Tweaks are lost after getting hit, there isn’t much incentive to invest heavily into them. Most players would do fine to stack three Iron Heart Tweaks and call it a day. There are more interesting and varied Tweaks out there, but I found them very gimmicky and only useful for speed runs or unlocking hard to earn chests.

Iconoclasts also features a Party system or rather a Party icon permanently affixed to the top-right of the screen. The Party icon indicates who is currently traveling along with Robin… that’s it. There is no character switching or anything of that sort so it’s a complete waste of gameplay real estate. It’s a minor gripe but fixed GUI elements like these make playing on an OLED screen susceptible to screen burn-in. The only occasion where players can swap to Mina is in two boss fights. Unlike Robin, Mina is armed with a deadly shotgun and can perform a slide dash. There isn’t much puzzle solving during Mina’s parts and it is more about swapping back and forth between Robin and Mina to defeat these bosses.

I’m mixed with regards to the story of Iconoclasts. The lore is genuinely interesting, with numerous flawed characters, a mix of religious and sci-fi elements and a reoccuring theme of parental love. The game is also very poorly told and feels like the equivalent of being forced to watch an episode mid-season without any context. Iconoclasts tells its story by flooding players with proper noun after proper noun. The story does start to piece itself together by the end and will probably make more sense on a second playthrough.

Iconoclasts is a charming metroid-vania with clever puzzles and varied boss fights. It is a beautiful game with expertly crafted animations. The game’s cartoon appearance is deceiving as it harbors a dark and nuanced tale. Minor spoilers… I would not recommend parents letting their 8 year old play this game, as there are numerous occasions of limbs being torn off and bodies exploding. Iconoclasts will be disappointing to players expecting a more traditional metroid-vania. There are no substantial power-ups to collect and Robin’s equipment remains relatively the same until the end game. Iconoclasts is an easy recommendation if you enjoy challenging puzzles and compelling (albeit poorly told) lore.

Weird game. At first, I didn't understand the negativity surrounding it on here at all. I was too busy being blown away that the game was made entirely by one dude. High-quality pixel art and animations, polished controls, inviting music, the works. I thought maybe people were just upset that the game wasn't really the Metroidvania it was touted to be. It's much more linear and there are hardly any character upgrades at all, which I didn't mind. I like games of all types. I was having fun solving puzzles and beating creatively designed (albeit a bit easy) bosses.

Then I kept playing and... yeah, I started to get it. There's something about this game that just makes you kinda hate it. The story is strangely dark and hostile in a way that does not fit the art style and tone at all. A family is put to death for sacrilege, a wheelchair-bound mother screams abuse at her only daughter, people turn on and murder each other over religious differences. It's just weird, man. I did not expect to get such edgelord, Reddit-atheist vibes from this game, and there's so much lore to it all for some reason. The characters are almost universally awful to boot. Whiny, preachy, obnoxious little cretins who never ever shut the fuck up -- even the good guys!

The lack of upgrades really drag down the pacing of the game's back half as well, which solely relies on somewhat complicated puzzles and combat encounters (which are basically also puzzles here) that really start to get old toward the end. Exploring is only rewarded with crafting materials you don't give two shits about either, so not much incentive there. Ugh.

It's all kind of a shame, because by and large this is a lovingly made and well-crafted game. There are almost no repeated puzzles or combat encounters whatsoever; the artistry and creativity behind creating all these unique little challenges for the player to overcome is really impressive. Thankfully, the boss fights at least stay decent all the way to the end -- a couple clunkers notwithstanding.

So yeah. One of the mixed-est of mixed bags I've come across in the indie dev auteur space. I feel like Joakim Sandberg should probably join up with a couple other peeps on his next project. That way he can focus on art and design and leave the character writing and game structure decisions to people that have a little more of an understanding of how to create a world that people actually enjoy spending time in.

Iconoclasts is both successful in pushing the boundaries of the 2D Action Adventure genre, but also comes up in many ways. Gameplay, presentation, design, they are all excellent. The world is imaginative, original but with roots to classic games, and there is a balance to the dour world with a smart subtle humour.

Unfortunately, whatever message the game was trying to get across felt so muted, incomprehensible to the point of me completing the game and asking "that's it? What am I supposed to take away from this?" There are so many contradictions between the philosophies at play and the emotions attached to the characters that represent the various ideas. I think the problem is the game wants to have a grounded depiction of both sides, but also argues that one is "wrong." It's possible to do that, but that type of complex storytelling was beyond the developer when they made Iconoclasts.

I think the game play was decent. There was a lot to explore, it just didn't thrill me playing it. There wasn't much in the line of upgrades save one or two weapons. There wasn't a lot to set it apart from a standard platformer...it was just about running from screen to screen.

Just got super bored super fast. I think it relates back to having such a huge backlog and having so many good games out there....it's just hard to compete when you're not an amazing game.

~David.

I just finished my first playthrough clocking in at 17.5 hours for 100% completion on normal difficulty. The game was frustrating at times but, overall, I'd recommend it.

Pros:

• Beautiful pixelwork and visuals. Very detailed. The amount of time and care put into the art really shows.
• Awesome soundtrack
• Most boss fights were fun, challenging, and interesting.
• More emphasis on interesting boss fights. A lot of them were pretty cool!
• Variety of challenging puzzles
• Lots of detail put into gameplay/events.

Cons:

• Some boss fights were pretty frustrating (controls, mechanics, etc.)
• The wrench. Cool idea in theory, but there were too many times when it was just cumbersome to use. Especially when using it for jumps. It was just too inaccurate when I needed to use it quickly.
• Verbose dialog. A lot of the dialog was uninteresting and didn't add a whole lot to the story. It slowed down the game and seemed to ramble on when I wanted to get back to the action. Even the parts that moved the story along seemed uninteresting to me.
• Auto-progressing dialog. Some of the dialog didn't wait for me to press a button to continue. This annoyed the hell out of me since it would often proceed/dismiss too quickly. It made it even harder because I was constantly trying to figure out if each dialog was auto or not before deciding if I could read it or if I should skim it. Ugh!
• Control scheme (Nintendo Switch) was a bit odd. The general scheme was ok, but the triggers duplicated some of the other controls and I found these odd so I didn't use them. I wish the gun action was on the ZR instead of R (among other things).

• Messy map design. Hard to get used to.
• Bland characters. Except a few.
• Story is all over the place.
• Too long.
• Way too many dialogues. Just shush.
• Almost useless crafting.

• Boss fights are fun.
• Amazing pixel art.
• Catchy sound effects. Main theme is awesome.

Give it a chance. I played on hard difficulty. Not really necessary. Normal mode heavily suggested.

So I've been running this podcast about Pokemon*, and I very frequently want to eviscerate a specific Pocket Monster. I have this weird desire to occassionally spend ~40 minutes dunking on a Pokemon- ending their entire career! But then I remember two things: This Pokemon is probably someone's favorite and someone worked hard designing this Pokemon.

A part of me wanted to give this game one star, but the fact that someone worked hard designing this game is so evident and frankly, appreciated. I just can't in good conscience give this game a one when the sprite work/pixel art has such clear purpose. Not only did the pretty visuals convince me to buy this game, they convinced me to finish this game.

But everything outside of the visuals left a sour taste in my mouth. The game is on paper a Metroidvania, but it is exceedingly linear and I think the game only offers 5 power ups through out, 2 of which don't change the gameplay in any substantial way. The final weapon upgrade (The gun that allows you to trade positions with what you shoot) could lead to interesting puzzles, but the game doesn't seem to have any desire to create interesting puzzles. It seems more interested in the game taking you to the next story beat.

This wouldn't be a big deal either if the story delivered. I like plenty of relatively simple games that crush their stories. A good parallel would be Gris which provides pretty visuals, simple gameplay (I would say Gris is more rewarding and the power ups dynamically alter the game), and its story is impactful. Iconoclasts on the other hand is an absolute mess. The story is about environmentalism, corrupt politicians, complicit soldiers- all of these feel botched. For example, the planet's natural resources have been drained by an evil opportunistic theocracy... but also the Natives? Huh? Well maybe it isn't trying for an allegory thing but the Natives are shown in a wholly positive light outside of this and when it is revealed that they screwed over the environment too, it is just treated like a whoops. Perhaps the most screwed story point is on the game's main point of critique- religion. I am all for a thoughtful correction of the thoughtlessly faithful and the evil men and women who take advantage of the unquestioning masses, but the religious are shown to be kinda right? But still evil? And also maybe wrong with a last minute dialogue-less reveal? Perhaps the game is trying to show a morally messy world, but it leads to a messy plot that feels toothless.

Odd and ends- the music is forgettable. The dialogue is stilted, occasionally funny, but mostly a mess. The enemy variety is wanting while there are tons of intricately designed NPCs. I appreciated entering a new area and seeing tons of new character designs, but perhaps that time would have been better spent making a few more enemy types.

LOOK, I'm pretty sure this game was made by one guy. Despite my many complaints, color me impressed. I'm working on a butt ugly looking game by comparison that will try almost none of the interesting stuff Iconoclasts tries. And if Konjak does the sprite work for another game in the future, it will at least be on my radar.

But if I had to choose between this and my other two star games, I'm going Jump Rope Challenge.

*Always gotta plug!

Iconoclasts is a game that tries something new, could be more, and yet remains fun to play. It's no Noitu Love 2, but has a creative charm all its own.

Taking place in a struggle-filled world with religious authoritarian rule, pirates, and a mechanic who wants to fix it all, you grab your wrench and start an adventure in solving puzzles and killing everything in sight. The story is crunched a bit in the runtime and everything isn't explained as much as it zooms past your head, almost incomprehensibly so. There's plenty of twists and serious moments amidst some silly ones, so it succeeds in that respect.

Gameplay consists of using a wrench to tighten bolts, spin gears, ride electric rails, and using a gun with up to three types of shots to deal with enemies. Enemies are varied and have their own ways to counter, kill, and otherwise maneuver past. Their tells aren't completely open, though, and this may lead to some difficulty to figure things out. That said, the game does allow running past some of these enemies in case they perplex.

As for the Metroidvania elements, Iconoclasts is a little too linear, pulling the player from zone to zone with not too much of a reason to go back and puzzles that get appropriately fiendish over time. The rewards are usually materials for tweaks, equippable pieces for you and your wrench to improve things like damage reduction and movement speed. However, these tweaks aren't particularly useful nor do they really change the tide of battle - they also temporarily break very easily and the player usually doesn't rely on them at all. This reduces the want to really go out and explore, but at least the game doesn't penalize you for not feeling its nonlinear elements.

Past the puzzles, the bosses are a mixed bag. Some involve some interesting teamups and new characters to fight as, and some have stealth elements that come up once and are never quite mentioned again. It's a mix between the main character using her shots in intense battles and mechanics that come and go with frustrating discovery and don't really come in handy for later. Much as some of these bosses are puzzles to figure out, the action-packed ones are much better.

The music is alright to forgettable, but the pixel art pops out like crazy. Characters are small but well animated, and blocky bits stand out against lush nature with great color. It's a beautiful world, even though we're not quite sure what everything means.

Iconoclasts isn't quite GOTY, but it's a solid effort from someone who wanted to get some creative ideas on the ground. As a small indie effort, some extra teamwork and QA would be able to get enough content and polish to make this an amazing game, but labors of love sometimes end up just ok, and that's alright enough for this one.

Iconoclasts is a game that, having its story as the main focus, deals with subjects such as faith, oppression, exploration of other peoples and prejudice. Beyond that, it succeeds in the technical aspects, despite some weird design choices. Joakim Sandberg is to be congratulated for, alone, being able to create one of the best games of the year.

Full review here (in Portuguese)

Got it on the Switch. I enjoyed it at first, but I grew to dislike it more with every hour. I hated the tower...so fucking tedious. The narrative intrigued me at first, later I couldn't care less. Same goes for the characters. I didn't like the puzzles one bit. The enemies and bosses range from pretty cool to kinda...Idk, inelegant? But the pixel art is gorgeous!

I stopped playing somewhere in the mountains, moving on to Dead Cells.