Iconoclasts
Robin just wants to be a mechanic and help people, but without a license she’s a sinner in Mother’s eyes. Ever since picking up her wrench, the world has been going nuts and she's wanted to bolt it back together. Now Penance is raining down on everyone she loves and One Concern agents are after her. But something big is going on – bigger than droughts of Ivory fuel and personal conflicts – and Robin’s in the thick of it. Hours of nut-twisting platform action-adventure Numerous densely detailed locations filled with fine-tuned action and puzzles 20+ gear-grinding, screen-filling boss battles stand in your way Three game-changing difficulty settings supported by a unique tweak system A heart-wrenching epic – can one mechanic fix the whole world? Iconoclasts is the masterwork of indie developer Joakim Sandberg, seven long years in the making. Iconoclasts delivers awesome action, hilarious hijinks and an emotional rollercoaster of deeply personal storytelling.
Game Discussion
Steam User 24
The religious scripture in this game has a quote from Charles Manson lol. I went in expecting a metroidvania. I got that plus a puzzle platformer and a story about people taking religion too far. 10/10 would destroy the space worm again
Steam User 15
The White:
In a broad sense, "yes". Iconoclasts gets the recommendation; it does a number of things really well. Visually, it's very well expressed. Sound design is decent. Musically, there are some high points, and it builds atmosphere and tone quite well. I enjoyed the movement and puzzling mechanics, generally. The sprite work is extremely detailed, and there's a ton of life and thought in the character dialogue (for most of the villains, anyway).
The Black:
I walked away from this game after blazing through ~70% of it back when it came out. I recall being ticked off about the stealth fight. I returned to it recently to 100% it. I offer some critiques with this in mind.
Turning boss fights into puzzles is an ambitious decision, and I respect it. The down-side, is that puzzle logic and combat logic often don't mix well. As a broad analogy, the best chess player in the world probably isn't all that great at chess if someone's taking pot shots at him from across the room with a 9mm. Having to split focus between survival and discerning an enemy's gimmick is a really quick way to test a player's patience.
The Gray:
For a while I couldn't figure out what Iconoclast's visual style reminded me of. It's very obvious, particularly late in the game when the sprite work gets massive and (intentionally) unsettling. It's Metal Slug. Once that piece "fit", a lot of the game-play and decisions started to make more sense to me. I still found a number of the fights frustrating for the sake of it, but I understood what I was working with.
I found most dialogue between the protagonists to be irrelevant. There was a concerted effort to use them to tell an interesting story, and there was a high note or two, but most of it felt pretty flat. (But that's just like, my opinion man.)
My penultimate thought is that Iconoclasts jumped on the bandwagon of adding a melee "parry" feature to their Metroidvania. It's incorporated well; it has a lot of versatility. Still, it's not a trend or a feature I enjoy, and I earnestly wish developers would stop doing it.
My final thought is that the boss rush is not worth your time, and I wouldn't bother with it unless you really want that last acheevo.
Steam User 22
This game will always have a special place in my heart.
Spoilers: Call me softhearted, but Royal and Black deserved a better fate. Also screw you Elro.
Steam User 7
A 2D Linear Metroidvainia with a emphasis on the worldbuilding and story. This game is a solo dev project that took a quite a long time to make and I don't think the dev plans on doing anything this big again.
I don't really have much more to say about it sadly. It's not anything outstanding gameplay-wise but it has story and characters I enjoy with a good artstyle and sometimes that's good enough to make it one of my favorite games of all time. As a Metroidvania you aren't really sequence breaking rather than you can back track to talk to people and get things at certain points in the story but not others.
So really the best tell for if you would like this isn't to read a review describing it but to just look at the screenshots and maybe a gameplay video of the first section. The game is pretty much exactly what it looks like other than the fact that it packs alot of dialouge and story in, more so than is usual for this genre.
Steam User 6
Decent linear platformer with very slight Metroidvania elements. Puzzles and combat are based on electricity and magnetism.
Best description will be - Teslagrad but with combat (and with arcade-style physics).
Very good for a game that was done by one single developer, but compared to other games in same genre - just decent.
Steam User 6
An excellent MetroidVania-esque platformer, with more of a puzzle focus and less maze-like than other MetroidVanias. The bosses, for the most part, are peak boss design, imo.
Steam User 5
By all means I dont understand the negativ reviews. This game is such a special experience and one of the best games I could ever experiance. Beside the fact that this game has one of the best pixel art ive ever seen, it has so much depth within it, which you just doesnt find very often in media and especialy games. Ive played this game two times, one in 2019 and one in 2022 and it felt just as good as I remembred. For anyone hesitating, its worth it. Konjak youve really made something truely special