Iconoclasts

Iconoclasts is a very solid game, I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would initially, wish I bought it sooner to support the developer.
General Info
First things first, it's not really a metroidvania. Iconoclasts is a rather linear puzzle platformer with a heavy focus on story with a large amount of dialog and cutscenes. Progression is usually gated by story triggers instead of abilities, however you can backtrack to previous areas for some collectibles. It's quite similar to Owlboy in this regard. You play as Robin, a girl mechanic with a wrench (used for melee attacks, parrying, grappling, as a makeshift lever etc) and a few weapons (blaster, bombs, and a third weapon acquired late in the game). Puzzles involve moving blocks around with bombs, electricity charge (from your wrench) and of course turning nuts and bolts in the correct order. The puzzles are generally on the clever side and it's an enjoyable gameplay loop, if a bit repetitive at times. Most enemies and bosses are again puzzle like in their nature and must be either hit with specific attacks or have their weak point exposed first. It's not uncommon to get obliterated by a boss because you've no idea what you're supposed to be doing, and then effortlessly beat it once you finally realize the correct strategy. There are 20+ completely unique bosses, each featuring gorgeous sprite work, and they're definitely one of the highlights.
Collectibles and Power Ups
The only collectibles in this game are schematics and crafting materials stashed in chests in each level. They're used to create "tweaks" which are equippable perks and act similar to the charms in Hollow Knight, you can equip up to three and they have effects like: +movement speed, +wrench attack, +air when diving, tank one hit etc. The only real game changer is the dodge roll (don't spend any ivory oil until you find the schematic for it). Now, this "tweak" system is a bit controversial, as it acts like the weapon levels in Cave Story, you lose a tweak slot (starting with the right most one) when you get hit and you need to kill a few enemies to restore it. Tanked multiple hits? Whoops, all your special abilities are locked. Thankfully you can usually regenerate tweaks by hitting a boss so the system is not too punishing in the boss fights.
Graphics and Music
The graphics and music/sound are very, very impressive for a single man project. And even if it were a group effort I'd still rate the pixel art as some of the best in the industry. Excellent choice of colors, many frames of animations for every silly little action (including cutscenes), true uncapped framerate (yes, this is one of the few 2D games you can play at 144Hz). Sure, Cave Story (another 2D side-scroller made by just one person) was impressive back in the day, but this is on the whole other level. Joakim Sandberg (Konjak) sure knows his craft. The music ranges from catchy chiptunes to sorrowful piano pieces and it's almost always a good fit. Overall, production values wise Iconoclasts reminds me of the Mega Man Zero and Mega Man ZX games a lot, but more technically sound and modern.
Story and Writing
Now the story is where the things get a bit more murky. Konjak sat on the game for way too long and managed to cram in way too many themes and tropes into his story and worldbuilding. You have government conspiracies, religion, environmentalism, rebels, pirates, literally agents from The Matrix, superhumans, aliens, brainwashing and many other things that I don't want to spoil. It's a mess, and the general writing is bloated as well with characters often going off on random tangents or having mental breakdowns every other scene. And despite the fact that the story is so verbose the protagonist is (mostly) silent. There's a backhanded explanation for this but it feels bizarre that Robin just blindly follows whoever happens to yell at her. Still, the twists aren't too bad if a bit convoluted at times. I just wish the script was trimmed down a bit and proofread by a native English speaker.
Bottom Line
As far as 2D side-scrollers go, Iconoclasts is a meaty game with a lot of content and will take you about 10-15 hours to beat, depending on how thorough you are with collectibles. As a story heavy puzzle game you will probably not want to play it again, but I still very much recommend experiencing it if you're a fan of the genre.

This was a great game, I think my main gripe with it was I felt the story was hard to follow. After watching some videos afterwards, some of the things that confused me make more sense.
The story follows the main character, Robin, who is a mechanic. In a world governed over religion, each person in the world is supposed to follow the job that they are "bestowed". Failure to do so gets your house and/or family destroyed through a "ritual" called Penance. Robin doesn't follow this religion and wants to go her own path. What follows is a tale about going against said religion, and the crazy evil truth behind it all.
NOW, the only reason I can tell you all this is because the videos I watched helped clear up my confusion. Throughout the game I felt I could understand the story somewhat, but a lot of it was a lil difficult to follow. This may not be the case for everyone, but it was for me.
The gameplay is super solid, it's a 2D action platformer that's almost like a Metroidvania. You'll unlock new guns and upgrades to your wrench to traverse the world. You can also find hidden materials to equip tweaks like being able to run faster, or increased melee damage.
My personal favorite thing about the gameplay is the party system. You'll occasionally find other playable party members who have their own different playstyles, and it's especially fun when they help you in boss battles.
The boss battles, OMG! I believe the boss battles were my favorite thing about this game. Each one was memorable and had the perfect amount of challenge. This also goes to the art style of the game which reminded me of the animations in Metal Slug, cept now I get to play with taller models and in an RPG-like setting.
The music was very good, I hummed along to some of the tunes while going through dungeons. I believe this game's strongest suit is definitely the characters. Both the good guys and bad guys were very well written and I found myself eager to learn more about them and their motivations.
I have a few gripes however. The story, though really good, was also really confusing on my first go round. I eventually was able to understand after I did some research after the game, but part of me wished I could understand it better while playing. The two times I got stuck in the game were kinda meh as well, Once I got stuck because I didn't hit a box with a certain weapon in the right square so I ended up thinking that I was doing the puzzle wrong, but I was actually doing it right. And then there was a boss battle where it wasn't clear at first what I was supposed to do so I had to research it and figure it out. Basically what I'm saying is, sometimes the game was quite unclear on how to do things, but it did not stop my overall enjoyment of the game.
Final thoughts? I liked it it. The boss battles were my absolute favorite parts of the game. It reminded me of how good the boss battles in Crosscode was. I can honestly recommend this game if you want a good 2D Action Platformer. Took me close to 10 hours to beat so it's a good moderate length. Thanks for reading!
TL:DR: A good and colorful 2D action platformer. Story was a lil hard to understand, but the gameplay was solid. Boss battles was AMAZINGLY fun. I recommend it!

This game is definitely a must play, it's fun, unique, memorable and has a great cast of characters; it felt like a seamless descent into madness and showed me how even the most cheery things can turn grim by just looking at a different angle.
☑ Story - Though it might be a little confusing at first, it unfolds in a satisfying way while still leaving space for theorizing.
☑ OST - The soundtrack is amazing and full of personality! To this day, even while not thinking about the game specifically, I whistle some of the songs in this game.
☑ Gameplay - I never felt bored while playing, each area presents a new mechanic and puzzles, and they're all great, although some puzzles can get a little confusing.
☑ Characters - The cast is memorable and interesting, each with their own personal struggles, they feel real and make you care about even the most problematic ones.

They say this game was made by a single person and it took a long time. It seems that person wanted to make several different games in that timespan.
The game looks like metroidvania but it's actually more like a puzzle platformer with interesting boss fights. Sure there are enemies in the world but they don't serve much of a story or gameplay purpose, it's like they're there cause you expect enemies in a game like that. Tone and story are all over the place. Character designs seem really at odds with who they are. You can argue it's part of the game theme but really it feels like the game has transformed a few times between character and even level design completion and the release.
I enjoyed my time with this disjointed mess. It left me confused, but not repulsed or anything. If I have to make any comparison it would be to Undertale.
Get it if you want to be excited and surprised. Don't expect it to be comfortable and nostalgic just because it looks like an old reliable 16-bit platformer.

A Cave Story sort of linear, story-focused metroidvania (kinda apparent from art style). Very polished and runs on potatos. Heavy on puzzles. Dialogues are a bit rough, but in time have really nice world building, memorable characters, and a surprisingly dark story. At this price I'd say I'm satisfied.

The game is beyond conflicted with itself, it's so hard to try and describe what it's like. The first half of the game, very light-hearted, Shantae-esque/Cave Story mechanics, humor, artstyle etc. The second half of the game then suddenly nose-dives into lore, mature themes and characters forcing themselves into 'plot elements', and starts to try to mold itself into a Devolver Digital game like Katana Zero instead.
The first half of the game feels like a breeze, the second half feels like the game's suddenly a rush. Major characters have really interesting tidbits about themselves, but are never fully explored in detail, and are even sometimes conflicting and incompetent. The only exception to this is the character "Mina", who is the only really compelling character in the game. But otherwise, when I finished the game, I just had more questions than answers for what was going on, and yet I still felt like I could predict what was going to happen, and I actually ended up not really caring for most characters in the game, regardless of their importance towards the plot/the main character, Robin.
The first half of the game has a nice pace with a rising difficulty spike, the second half of the game throws a complete screw into the formula and has very anomalously hard bosses with somewhat cryptic patterns with no room for error. With other bosses allowing for "haha gun go brr brr" levels of brain-dead. The game has a mechanic similar to Cave-Story in which the character is somewhat upgraded based on not getting hit and for killing enemies, but this ends up being very high risk-low reward and I start to avoid late-game enemies (which tended to be the same three reused over and over due to the plot).
All of these nitpicks are further accentuated by the very contradictory art style. I was very surprised to see such a bold, gritty and realistic title-screen, only to be greeted with very soft, cartoony, Shantae-esque sprites in game (which is personally the style I preferred).
I liked this game overall and I could see the work put into it, but these poorly executed concepts and ideas may throw some people off. Even though I feel like I'm thorough in terms of Metroidvanias, I only ended the game with 49% completion. Most "items", or should I say "components", don't feel too significantly major to collect.
If you want to play the game, I'd recommend it, but in my opinion, this is not a Metroidvania which I'll revisit after my first playthrough.
Thumb-neutral-positive game.

I played this game for a bit on PC, refunded it because I wasn't really feeling it, but recently bought and played it in full on Switch, so keep that in mind.
Iconoclasts was a very interesting game. Made by one person over the span of several years, it sports gorgeous pixel art, great music, unique puzzles, and a surprisingly dark and existential story. It follows the story of a young adult named Robin, who ekes out a life as a mechanic for her small settlement - illegally, as much of the world is dominated by a theocratic empire called the One Concern, which forbids unauthorized civilians from tampering with Ivory, essentially a magical superfuel that the One Concern have integrated into just about every part of construction possible. Robin's life is thrown into turmoil after the One Concern find her in the middle of repairing her brother's home, and she has to go on the run to escape them, with the assistance of Mina, a "pirate" whose society is hunted by the One Concern for offering a different religion than theirs; Royal, the pompous if disillusioned heir to the One Concern's pope analogue; and occasionally Elro, Robin's traumatized older brother. Through her journey, Robin learns more about One Concern as a society, Ivory's true nature, and the lengths people will go to to fulfill their ideals.

As a metroidvania and a game, I can't recommend Iconoclasts. Movement and action is generally smooth, but never changes enough for me to really enjoy it - there's only a handful of upgrades through the game, which generally just let you solve more puzzles instead of offering new and interesting ways to move around the world. You also obtain upgrades in weird ways, they're usually just handed to you with little fanfare instead of getting them for completing a boss or challenge like you'd expect. Combat isn't super interesting, and I found myself actively avoiding it by the end of the game since often it can just be waiting for the opportunity to reflect any enemy's shot or spamming gunfire until they die. If there's a part of the gameplay I can compliment, it's that the puzzles are overall very unique and often are really good! What's more, bosses are plentiful throughout the game and each one is really interesting and usually fun to fight. Some can be pretty tedious or annoying, but overall each boss is very unique and there's a ton of passion behind their design.

Despite the problems I have with the gameplay, I'd still recommend Iconoclasts as a must-play, because its story is excellent. Characters are interesting, have depth, changing motivations, and quiet moments that make you feel for them even if they're unlikeable as people. Decisions made by characters impact the story greatly and it's amazing to see a lot of the themes they address. Like I said earlier, the game is surprisingly dark in the latter half, in an existential sense that makes you imagine what choices you would make if you were in their situation. It's emotional to play through at many points. The only downside I can claim about the story and characters is that the English translation can often be confusing or poor, which makes some parts of the story harder to grasp until further in the game.
Overall, please play Iconoclasts. Support this labor of love by an indie developer, it was a really good and unique experience.