Iconoclasts

Iconoclasts is fun and creative with its engaging mechanical puzzles, wonderful explosive bosses, and snappy controls. The setting has bright graphics, and bold characters wrapped a story of ideological conflict and energy dominance. Most areas are puzzle rooms that you can use your various weapon mechanics to shoot and spin open passageways that will permanently stay open. There is some retracing but mostly you progress past an area to continue the story. The puzzles keep a good balance of difficulty, and are more about figuring out the mechanisms, without requiring quick reflexes, nor speed platforming. Most bosses are enjoyable puzzles unto themselves as it can be unapparent how to damage them with your various attack techniques. The equipping of "Tweaks" is a neat idea, but is only lightly utilized compared to all the Tweak components you obtain. It is a very clever, tightly woven game. There are Three levels of difficulty; Relaxed Mode, Standard, and Harder, and I completed the game twice to try two modes. I played my first play through in "Relaxed Mode" where you cannot die from damage and will not run out of air underwater or in toxic gas areas. It took 23 hours and I found it a challenge to learn the mechanics and to advance through the puzzles. Although I could not expire in Relaxed Mode, many bosses took longer than I want to admit to figure out what mechanisms or shots to use on them or smack them with a wrench hit. The boss Statue "Inti" you need two characters to move contraptions and hurt the enemy, for the hide and seek boss "Ash" you need to tag team hide somehow and sneak up on the enemy, and the boss Agent White seemed invincible as he would continuously heal. You will not be lacking gameplay to solve these bosses even with yourself being invincible. The entire Tower area is a very clever maze of mechanisms to reach all areas, and I had trouble with it even without taking damage. The only problem with Relaxed Mode is it does not force you to figure out the boss patterns to survive, since you sort of just keep shooting different weapons to see if the boss dies. Playing a second playthrough in "Standard mode" took a more efficient 13hrs because I knew the controls. Being susceptible to damage in "Standard mode" made me realize that the bosses are really well designed with environmental cues and patterns that you need to watch to survive. The boss tunnel train Carver was a joy to fight when I realized there was a pattern to escape his charging around the track. There were a few really hard parts where you can get pummeled. One room near the end you choke on poisonous gas and at the same time you need to jump and latch onto grappling rails up the screen, and quickly aim charged shots to kill enemies and remove a WALL, then right after you need to fight Agent Black. The problem is you take damage and if you succeed in the gas section then Save and quit you still need to redo this section gas to remove the WALL. You may reach Agent Black with heavy damage and Retrying does not refill your health. A few bosses beat me often because I could not avoid their barrage of attacks; Mendeleev jumps around the screen and I felt so slow, Mother was a very tough fight that I got hit a lot, the final Agent Black fights were difficult, and the extra boss Mother's Corners were a extremely tough double attack that I barely beat with luck not skill. Luckily a few bosses drop healing hearts if you attack them correctly, and it was the only way I beat the many phases of the final Worm boss. Without the aid of no damage in Relaxed mode, these end game parts took a bunch of tries to get past as you get knocked back and pummeled and sometimes cannot see though all the explosions. There are some upgrades called "Tweaks" that you can craft that give you Longer weapons effects, or more Underwater breathing, or Faster movement which can be helpful. Your Tweaks are tied to your damage taken and unfortunately you can temporarily lose the ability of the Tweak until you replenish with damage orbs by killing enemies or solving puzzles. The game only allows 3 Tweaks to be equipped at a time so you never feel super stacked and powerful, but need to choose Tweaks for each section of the journey. Tweaks are neat but are used very sparingly, and I wish you could get more slots or permanent Tweaks to add to your arsenal. There is a awesome Tweak that lets you Dash Roll, but again you lose it within seconds of taking damage on a boss, and I would have loved to play with this ability. This game is really good and in many regards is a Master Class of boss design and variety. It would be great if they had a world map to show how areas connect (thanks to the Steam map by Tetracube). A handful of times the game expected me to return to areas to meet a character and trigger the next event and I would retrace the map for a long time to see what I missed. The game has warp rooms that you find very late in the game but they are sort of out of the way. The game kept most puzzles fairly moderate to solve in 1 or 2 actions, and I realize they could have gotten super complicated with bomb throws and moving platforms. I appreciate they kept the game challenging without crossing into frustration, and only a few sections it flexes how difficult they could have made it. For me it was the right balance of challenge and the bosses were hard enough. There are some obscure secret bosses, and secret screens to find, and some optional mechanisms; like jump shot propelling up, or Dash Rolling in mid air to travel further across the screen that could have been interesting game mechanics if they required it. Perhaps the story content is a little too text wordy and dire to make me feel thrilled about everything in this game, but this game deserves attention and multiple play throughs.

UPDATE I BEAT CHALLANGE MODE!!!!!!!!!! i may be 8 years late but i just 100% this game and im not the one to be a big completionist fan but this game motivated me to do so thanks to it always tracking your progress i got sad when i reached 90% i loved all the characters and royal dying was hard to see as im now left to wonder how it would of been if he survived and in all honestly this is my new favorite game of all time this deserves to be in indie cross holy dam

還不錯，給個好評支持 算是可以玩的小品遊戲，難度也不高，基本都是機智

Incredibly moving. Incredibly impressive. Wowie. Sobbed like a baby. Art is beautiful. Spritework and animation is impeccable. I am overjoyed. I am so sad.

good game.

This game is a masterclass of interactive storytelling integrated into gameplay. Basically what Metroid Fusion's storytelling wanted to be when it grew up. It's hard to praise the storytelling and worldbuilding too much, and there's so much to say about the way the story is told via gameplay that it's better to say it in an essay than a Steam review. My biggest issue is that the "Tweaks" system is indeed accurately named - the tweaks don't really make big changes to the gameplay, and while they are fun, they end up largely inconsequential. The real mechanic of progress is the major upgrades, unless you're going for 100%. There is some self-awareness in that design, since the main inspiration, Metroid Fusion, also does this, but I would say this is a flaw of both games. There's exactly 2 ways to play this game optimally - Any% and 100%, since there is very little reward in going for only some of the tweaks, rather than all of them. And that's a shame since the puzzles to get them are VERY good. If you're just playing for the story, then focus on that, I would say. The puzzles to unlock the tweaks would make a decent post-game challenge if taken all at once. Oh yeah, review. Right. Yeah the game's amazing. Certified indie classic. Buy it.

This game is a gem. An almost entirely one man project, the artstyle is beautiful, the game is fun, the story is way way more complex than I expected. It is also, VERY funny. Get it if you are a fan of either the artwork or the genre.