[Review] Iconoclasts (PS4)

January 14, 2020

Konjak’s magnum opus (so far), Iconoclasts’ colourful art belies an emotionally charged story filled with tragedy and intensity. It’s also a great Metroidvania with some novel mechanics!

Before playing this, Sandberg’s biggest commercial undertaking (and still a completely solo development effort), I played Ivory Springs, essentially a prototype for what this would become. It has a chibi character style and the first boss has a different design, but it plays out almost exactly like the opening ten minutes of the final product, then just stops. I also tried Solar Plexus, an abandoned demo on his website. Its buggy state prevented me from getting much further than the first room, but I noticed that the ledge grab and stomp move from it made it into Iconoclasts.

Anyway, Iconoclasts is polished to a mirror sheen and the world and characters are deeply developed. Each sidekick and the main antagonists all feel like the protagonist of their own story, with their own desires and flaws. The story is all about conflict between belief systems and personalities, an escalating series of twists and revelations, and to quote Red Dwarf, people “using religion as an excuse to be extremely crappy to each other”.

Characters feeling like the centre of the story is part of the story, as the silent playable character Robin is pulled along by circumstances and her friends trying to achieve their goals, which is occasionally called out by other characters. Their arguments and bouts of self-pity make for some lengthy but engaging cutscenes, particularly when they’re coupled with catastrophic plot events.

I can’t emphasise enough how surprised I was by how dramatic this game is, and it works so well; but if you don’t want to engage with it too much, cutscenes can also be skipped! Seriously though, watch them. Just don’t expect things to go rosily; stuff goes wrong constantly, and lots of people pay the price for their own or others’ mistakes, even though everyone thinks they’re doing the right thing. It’s a destructive spiral of theocracy, resource scarcity, transhumanism, emotional dependence, cultural taboos, self-righteousness… It’s a rare Metroidvania that deals with these issues so openly.

Anyway yeah, it’s a Metroidvania! Robin has a gun and a wrench, which both get enhancements as you progress to do different things, making for interesting challenges in combat and puzzles. The map crisscrosses and is fun to traverse, with hidden baubles that tie in to the tweak system. These are bonuses, usually passive, that you can swap out as you choose. The three you pick are deactivated as you take damage, and are recharged by picking up Ivory (the MacGuffin that this world is built around).

The game is more or less a culmination of what Mina of the Pirates (the original unfinished Konjak game) was trying to do, but much more mature in terms of storytelling and game design. I noticed a few direct throughlines too, not least of which is Mina herself, repurposed here as the closest thing to a deuteragonist this game has. She even has a handful of solo and co-op gameplay segments, swapping out her knife from her own game and Ivory Springs for a shotgun.

The boss fights are big and bold, as expected from Sandberg. This time, they’re all well integrated into the story too. There’s even a couple of secret hidden battles you’ll only find through very thorough exploration (or using a guide). And the final boss is amazing if only for its mind-blowing context within the game, but it also contains a sequence which forces Robin to confront the dark side of her relationships.

Iconoclasts really makes an impression. If you engage with it, you might find yourself thinking about it a lot when you’re not playing it, which for me is a very good sign. I’m very impressed with what Sandberg worked up to here, and I feel I appreciated it more by examining his past works. The story is full of downer moments but no less engaging for it, and has just enough glimmers of hope and catharsis that you don’t come out of it feeling completely drained. Loved it.

12:01pm | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZpvIwu2nBRiPK

(Notes: 19)