Bottom Line: Joakim Sandberg spent the better part of a decade building a Metroidvania that fights above its weight class on nearly every front—combat, puzzles, art—and only stumbles when its ambitious script reaches for more than it can hold. Buy it for the wrench, stay for the heartbreak.
The Gameplay Loop
Iconoclasts runs on a fast, satisfying rhythm: shoot, wrench, solve, climb, repeat. Robin carries a stun gun for ranged work and the wrench for everything else, and the interplay between the two is where the moment-to-moment combat sings. You stun a mechanical foe from a distance, close the gap, and finish with a wrench swing. The controls are tight and responsive—inputs land when you ask them to, which matters enormously in a game that regularly demands platforming and shooting in the same breath.
The puzzle design is the quiet star. Sandberg builds intricate physics and mechanical contraptions that ask you to think about how the wrench manipulates the world—rotating bolts to reposition platforms, redirecting objects, chaining mechanisms in sequence. These aren't filler between fights. They're often the reason a room exists, and the good ones deliver that clean click of comprehension that puzzle games live for. When a solution finally reveals itself, it feels earned rather than obtuse.
Progression follows the Metroidvania playbook. New tools unlock new routes, and the interconnected world rewards curious, exploration-minded players who double back to pry open what they couldn't reach before. The Tweak system deserves special mention because it does something clever: your upgrades aren't permanent buffs sitting safely in a menu. Take enough damage and a Tweak can go offline, forcing you to fight at reduced capacity until you recover. It injects real tension into combat and discourages the passive stat-stacking that plagues lesser upgrade systems.
Here's where I push back. The backtracking, while light, occasionally overstays its welcome, and the pacing sags in stretches where the story pumps the brakes on the action. Difficulty is another sticking point—it doesn't ramp so much as it spikes, dropping brutal encounters into an otherwise moderate curve without much warning. You'll cruise, then hit a wall, then cruise again. Some players find that thrilling. Others find it whiplash.
The Narrative Problem
The story is Iconoclasts' biggest swing and its most divisive element. Sandberg is clearly reaching for something profound—faith, authority, purpose, the exhaustion of being the person everyone relies on—and when it connects, it genuinely moves. Robin's arc has real emotional weight, and the cast around her is written with care.
But the script is heavy-handed. It tells when it should show, over-explains its themes, and lurches between goofy comedy and heavy tragedy with a tonal whiplash that undercuts both. The ambition is admirable; the execution wobbles. This is the rare game where the mechanics are more disciplined than the writing, and if you came purely for a taut action-adventure, the narrative's insistence on Big Ideas may test your patience. It's a flawed, sincere, deeply personal story—and your mileage will depend entirely on how much you forgive earnestness that outruns its craft.