Iconoclasts

A must-play for anyone who likes Cave Story or similar games.
A rare gem of a story that lets you discover its bone-chilling depths through the imagery and environments rather than just reading walls of text to have something explained to you. Don't let its bright and colorful artwork fool you, it may have some comic relief and genre-awareness, but it's very dark and serious most of the time.
The highlights of the games are the bosses and the story. Collectibles are very unrewarding to find, so not much purpose in going for those unless you're an obsessive 100%'er. Boss rushes are fun though!
For those saying that the story isn't great, it's complicated. It's not spelled out for you, much is implied and many discoveries are made out of chronological order. It can make it hard to understand the whole thing the first time through, but it's truly captivating once you start putting the pieces together! You'll get your replay value out of the story. You'll get more of it the second time you play through it, just like a good book.
As I'm writing this, I'm halfway through New Game + and I'm enjoying it even more than the first time!

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!

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.

When I first started Iconoclasts, judging by the cutesy, stylized pixel-art style and joyful music accompaniment, I expected a heartfelt, quirky storyline throughout, presented in a RPG-y fashion - and do not misinterpret my words: it is. However, said imaginative story is also brimming with extremely gut-wrenching scenes and deeply political and religious nuances, even if the main focus is on our heroine's journey. If you add the outstanding, puzzle-sque level design and heavily technical boss fights to the lot, you end up with a top-notch metroidvania. Evidently, that is not to say it is not a flawed creation: major fights sometimes have a lot going on visually; finding the right combos for each enemy requires a certain amount of trial-and-error; and certain characters and plots - main and secondary - are presented yet barely fleshed out. That said, the aforementioned inconveniences are but a tiny smudge, as Iconoclasts performs beyond expectations in every other aspect, and in my book, it has undoubtedly become a must-play platformer.

A solid 12-hour game, with great characters and solid story. It's not one of these tough as nails platformers and that's a good thing, the game mechanics are fun while making for nice puzzles to the end.

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.

This is a thoroughly 7/10 metroidvania. I think $20 is too much for it compared to what you could get elsewhere, but on sale it's not a bad pick up for fans of the genre. It's worth noting that it's almost more of a puzzle platformer than metroidvania, but it's a blurry line.
The art is pretty great, and the stand out part of it. Movement is pretty good. Combat is a low point outside of boss battles, but it's also not as prolific as many other games. Most of the bosses are fairly original and creative, however almost every one of them has at least one or two moves that are completely impossible to understand what to do without trial and error, which is bad. The fight with Ash was almost enough to make me quit the game and never come back, and it's like 2/3 into the game so it's THAT awful.
The story is nothing original, the world and lore is somewhat interesting but leaves too many questions for how much parts of it are talked about repetitively.