Iconoclasts

Iconoclasts isn't a trendsetter within its genre on a mechanical level. It has great puzzles and poorly-handled combat. Yet there's such huge amounts of time and personality poured into how Iconoclasts looks, and how its game world is built up, that it's easy to forgive such issues. It's a gorgeous 2D puzzle platformer with interesting characters, and that is enough to see it rise above merely being 'good'.

Unless you plan on speedrunning the game, Iconoclasts has relatively limited replay value. Still, in the end Iconoclasts wasn't quite what I expected, but I greatly enjoyed my time with it, and would recommend it to any platformer fan. Now I've had some time to digest it, I don't think it'll be dethroning Cave Story as the solo-developed platform adventure king, but it comes pretty damn close, and I've a feeling that the final third of the game will stick with me for a good long while, too.

That’s where Iconoclasts lives too, outside the lines. Of its genre, its inspirations, and its expectations. It’s a delightful surprise, the kind that doesn’t come around often enough.

Iconoclasts is a kind of game that no AAA studio could ever have made. It has all the mechanics, visuals and other easily judged elements that a video game needs, and nailed down really well too, but it also has a less tangible feel to it that just endears it to the player. Even among other nostalgic pixel-art metroidvania games, this one stands out, and ought to be remembered as one of the indie greats.

Making a Metroid-inspired pixelated platformer as an independent developer is practically a rite of passage. We have seen plenty over the years, and for good reason - they're a lot of fun. Iconoclasts fits this mold and checks the right boxes with a confident red marker. The pixelated art looks great, figuring out how to explore each area and build out its map is a lot of fun, and both jumping and shooting are accurate. These elements alone would merit a recommendation. However, Iconoclasts takes its success a step further with an impactful story touching on topics not widely explored in video...

Ivory: a natural substance that drives innovation and is held up as the lifeblood by a nearly fanatical religious sect. Taking up the groundwork of an unfinished sidescroller by the name of Ivory Springs, this source of energy is what drives a world where citizens live in ever fear of penance and divine retribution. Robin’s adventure in Iconoclasts is an undertaking nearly nine years in the making and the PlayStation 4 debut for developer konjak is something I’ve personally been anticipating for quite some time.

Iconoclasts’ combination of clever Metroid-inspired design and lush art offers more than enough incentive to stick with it, even when the ambitious plot doesn’t always connect. This is a strange, complex game that – refreshingly – doesn't play quite like any other work in the genre. Iconoclasts offers a welcome reminder that they don't all have to play the same way.

Finally, there's a game for all of us who never fulfilled our dreams of becoming a mechanic.

A mechanic tries to fix a broken world.

An uneven mix of the overfamiliar and the surprisingly inspired, but the gorgeous graphics alone make this a Metroidvania to remember.

Perhaps Iconoclasts just tries to do a bit too much of everything, which is stunning considering it has come from a single person’s creative drive, which is so compellingly impressive. A decent edit of the script, fewer bosses and puzzle repetitions, and the rest could have been refined even more. Seven years ago Iconoclasts would have blindingly stood out on its artstyle alone – as it indeed did when announced, but now it has to compete with a plethora of other captivating 2D pixelart games. Luckily for Iconoclasts that, despite its flaws it still stands tall amongst its peers, both recent an...

Making things is hard, making things on your own is even harder—or at least that is what math has taught me. While I am not a game developer I would like to take a stab in the dark here and say that a game is one of the hardest things to make. So the mere fact that Iconoclasts has been an eight year long passion project of one developer, Joakim “Konjak” Sandberg, is both mathematically mind boggling but also a real curb stomp to my ego.