Iconoclasts 
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Robin Plushie is available now!Mar 23, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsWe have partnered with Makeship to produce our first plushie of Robin! Check it out Here! But be quick, the campaign runs out on the 13th of April! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/28081121/e29f2ba92985051f12f361dbc1bd00c32f7031c9.pngRobin PlushieMar 21, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsRobin Plushie! We have partnered up with Makeship.com to make an Robin Plushie! There will be a giveaway before the sale starts on the 23rd of March! More info on how to enter here: https://twitter.com/konjak/status/1638293115105685505 {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/28081121/f0b34dd1e71327325ec88a15eac1d12237a45b37.pngThe impossible architecture of video gamesFeb 12, 2019 - EurogamerThere is a saying in architecture that no building is unbuildable, only unbuilt. Structures may be impossible in the here and now, but have the potential to exist given enough time or technological development: a futuristic cityscape, a spacefaring megastructure, the ruins of an alien civilisation. However, there are also buildings that defy the physical laws of space. It is not an issue that they could not exist, but that they should not. Their forms bend and warp in unthinkable ways; dream-like structures that push spatial logic to its breaking point. The Tomb of Porsena is a legendary monument built to house the body of an Etruscan king. 400 years after its construction, the Roman scholar Varro gave a detailed description of the ancient structure. A giant stone base rose 50 feet high, beneath it lay an "inextricable labyrinth", and atop it sat five pyramids. Above this was a brass sphere, four more pyramids, a platform and then a final five pyramids. The image painted by Varro, one of shapes stacked upon shapes, seems like a wild exaggeration. Despite this, Varro's fanciful description sparked the imaginations of countless architects over the centuries. The tomb was an enigma, and yet the difficulty in conceptualising it, and the vision behind it, was fascinating. On paper artists were free to realise its potential. If paper liberated minds, the screen can surely open up further possibilities. There's no shortage of visionary structures within the virtual spaces of video games. These are strange buildings that ask us to imagine worlds radically different to our own. Whilst many impossible formulations are orientated towards the future, there are also plenty from the past. The castle in Ico is one example of this. During the Renaissance, Europe was obsessed, not with future utopias, but with ancient Greece and Rome. While the box art of Ico is famously inspired by Giorgio de Chirico, the long shadows and sun-bleached stone walls only make-up a portion of the game's mood. It is the etchings of Giovanni Piranesi that best capture what it's like to explore the castle's winding stairs and bridges. Piranesi's imaginary Roman reconstructions were absurdly big - so colossal you could get lost in just the foundations. In a similar way, Ico's castle is impossibly large, the camera zooming out in order to overwhelm you and build up the unfathomable mystery of its origin and purpose. Read more Iconoclasts was the biggest and strangest 2D platformer of 2018Dec 26, 2018 - PC GamerDroves of long-awaited, retro-styled indies released in 2018: Timespinner, Death’s Gambit, Chasm and Iconoclasts were arguably the most anticipated, and all were subject to years of close scrutiny by fans. These titles stick to a genre format that has existed for over 30 years—the Metroidvania—and none do much to challenge or surprise players, motivated as they are by nostalgia and reverence for the classics. Nostalgia feels like a real impediment in the modern evolution of 2D adventure games—there’s no reason why the genre can’t continue to evolve. For people who only play 2D platformers (I’m sure there are plenty, and I respect them), Steam probably has several lifetimes' worth of entertainment in its inventory just for them. This year really felt like a turning point for the indie platformer, though: after Hollow Knight and Celeste, things have changed. It's harder than ever to just tread water when it comes to platformers. You have to make something special. But if there’s a game I’ve played this year, nay this decade, which immaculately re-constructs not so much the visual style but the spirit of the '90s, then it’s probably Iconoclasts. This isn’t a radical game, it’s a formally conservative one. But it’s goddamned beautiful, and the fact that it was created by a single person—Joakim Sandberg—lends it an intimacy and urgency that’s lacking from so many other titles that just dutifully tick the boxes. I, uh, don’t really know what the game’s about. The story is intensely convoluted and that’s because it’s written by one person. I love that it’s intensely convoluted, even while I couldn’t be bothered to parse it. I know that Robin is the protagonist: she’s a mechanic, and one of her main problem-solving tools is a wrench. This plays into the game’s light physics-based puzzle play: her wrench can be used as a grappling hook, a weapon, and—wait for it—a tool for turning bolts. For whatever reason, Robin comes to blows with the powerful ruling organisation “One Concern”, and the game mostly follows her efforts to escape or thwart it. Many have pointed out that the Iconoclasts has an absurdly convoluted plot, but if you’re like me and play 2D platformers for the pleasure of inhabiting their worlds and jumping between platforms, a moment spent gazing at Sandberg’s lushly detailed pixel-art will make any other concern redundant. This is, without a doubt, the most lavish 2D sidescroller I’ve ever seen, and every effort has been made to imbue it with charm and personality. The opening world—blue skies, green fields, comforting tunes—is strewn with cubes and triangles representing stone, foliage and grass. But just over there lay the remains of a brick wall, and further afield are metallic-looking pillars...Iconoclasts, now in Chinese!Nov 6, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsIconoclasts is now available in Chinese through publisher Gamera Game! We are very happy that the game is now playable in Chinese. - Support for Traditional and Simplified ChineseUntitledNov 5, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsUntitledOct 29, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsUntitledSep 13, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsThe daunting aftermath of releasing your dream game, as told by the devs of Stardew Valley, Owlboy, and moreAug 7, 2018 - PC Gamer Release day for an indie developer sounds like it’d be a celebration. Years of work have finally reached a successful conclusion. They can sit back, relax, and wait for the adulation and money to roll in. But it's not really like that. “I heard a lot of people speculate what this would feel like and I was never really sure what would happen when we finally hit launch,” says Simon Stafsnes Andersen, head of Owlboy maker D-Pad Studio. “The reality was ... conflicting.” The truth is that launch is not an end. It’s the start of something else, and with that fresh start come many struggles that are born in the intensity of game development. This is true for almost all modern game developers, but it's especially dramatic for indies who have spent half a decade or more quietly working on their dream project. After you've put all of yourself into a game, what comes next? Life before launch It s not healthy to make a game on your own. I built up resentments and worries on the way, that Iconclasts was weird, too specific to me. Joakim Sandberg “The final push was probably some of the most emotionally draining and turbulent months of the entire nine-year development cycle,” Andersen says of the final few months working on Owlboy. He and his four-strong team worked practically every waking hour to make the deadlines for its physical release. “We were all really burned out by the time we were close to the finish line and it in many ways didn’t feel like it was going to be real. We didn’t have time to feel anything at that point. Our only concern was to deliver on what we had set out to do.” Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone felt much the same. Stardew Valley’s four-and-a-half years development ended with him working 12-hour days, seven days a week, and he was fixing bugs and making last-minute changes right up to the end. “I remember staying up all night shortly before launch day in order to fix a major bug that would've ruined it.” But not all crunch is specifically about work hours. Ben Porter is programmer, designer and art director of MoonQuest, a platformer with Terraria-style exploration and crafting in distinctly weird generated environments. He managed to work nine-to-five days before its July Early Access release, but after six years, he was exhausted—and also a new dad. “Luckily my daughter had started to sleep through the night so I started to get more rest and could concentrate for longer,” he says. But final rounds of testing threw up all kinds of unanticipated new issues that had to be fixed. Yoku's Island Express, a pinball adventure. For team Villa Gorilla, the multiplatform release of its wonderful pinball-platformer Yoku’s Island Express was handed by its publisher, Team 17, who governed a carefully plotted series of submission deadlines. “It’s a super-intense period...Boss Rush - Patch 1.15Aug 2, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsWe are happy to announce that the latest update has some new and exciting features to coincide with Iconoclasts launching on the Nintendo Switch! Boss Rush unlocks once you have completed the game. It allows you to relive the most exciting moments of Iconoclasts. Battle through a timed gauntlet of increasingly difficult bosses. Relaxed Mode introduces a new, easier, difficulty. Unwind and play the game at your own pace. Found Iconoclasts too hard or easy? You can now change difficulty whenever you load a new game. Patch Notes: - Added Boss Rush mode - Added "Relaxed" low difficulty mode - You may now choose difficulty on loading a game - Fixed Elro disappearing during the Carver battle - Various smaller fixesThe best metroidvania games on PCMar 21, 2018 - PC GamerWelcome to our round-up of the best Metroidvania games. That slightly awkward portmanteau refers to a hybrid genre inspired by Metroid and Castlevania. They tend to be 2D platformers that have you exploring dungeons, defeating bosses, and picking up items that unlock new zones of the map. Within this simple format there is plenty of room for variation and, it turns out, lots of gorgeous art. A few of the games on the list have been lovingly crafted by small teams and even individuals over the course of a decade or so. Others, like Dead Cells, experiment with fusing the metroidvania with other genres to create a powerful hybrid. Whichever games you pick, expect lots of 2D platforming and some tough boss fights. Ori and the Blind Forest Ori's warmly animated world and slightly tearful opener barely hint at the incredibly tricky platforming challenges that follow. PC Gamer's Philippa Warr has compared this to a teddy bear that wants to punch you in the face—it's a cute and beautiful-looking game, but damn tricky. The pleasant soundtrack puts you at ease while the game rarely does. Axiom Verge One of the very best modern examples of the form, Axiom Verge is set in a dark, Giger-esque alien world populated by mysterious giant mechanical beings and, of course, a slew of bullet hell boss monsters. New paths open up as you discover fresh alien gadgetry, like a trenchcoat that lets you phase through walls, and a device that lets you control a small alien bug to crawl into new cave systems. Combat is simple—blast the alien things flapping around each level—but there are loads of weapons to discover, and plenty of secrets if you’re determined enough to glitch or blast your way through secret walls. It’s a sinister and slightly unnerving game with some genuinely dark moments, but that makes it a fitting tribute to the lonely hostile corridors of the original Metroid games. Hollow Knight This one takes a while to get going, but once you have a few upgrades it’s a spectacular hand-drawn metroidvania with a snappy melee combat system. Hollow Knight borrows its melancholy apocalyptic atmosphere from Dark Souls, and also its currency recovering system—if you make it back to the place you died you can reclaim your last life’s earnings. Hollow Knight looks gorgeous, and it’s full of interesting bug characters that sell you new gear and give you extra quests. The bosses are challenging and the dodge-and-slash combat is a serious test of skill once you’ve unlocked a few moves and started running into the game’s more serious enemies. The world is beautifully put together, too, and you learn more about the fate of the city as you dash, skip, and double-jump into new zones. Owlboy You’ll notice that many of these games are set underground in endless cave systems. Owlboy is set in a floating cloud kingdom. As said Owlboy, Otus, you have to flap...Rezzed lines up six more games including Disco ElysiumMar 12, 2018 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunAre you going to the glittering Imperial city of London next month for games show EGX Rezzed? I m not. I ve got a stag weekend in Madrid where I m expected to play Gaelic football with a crowd of storming drunks. Trust me, you re better off in the bright glass hallways of Tobacco Dock, especially now that six more games have been added to the line-up, including Disco Elysium, the surreal isometric adventure formerly known as No Truce With The Furies. (more…) Iconoclasts Soundtrack and moreFeb 15, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsThe Official Soundtrack of Iconoclasts is now available on Steam! Composed solely by Joakim Sandberg, you can find in the DLC section. Relive those multi-stage boss fights! Patch 1.14 is also live, improving game stability, patch notes can be found in the Community Hub. We would also like to remind everybody that the Iconoclasts Discord is growing: get help if you are stuck, figure out the most effective speedrunning route and Tweak combos or just hang out with the community! Thank you all! Iconoclasts Soundtrack and moreFeb 15, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsThe Official Soundtrack of Iconoclasts is now available on Steam! Composed solely by Joakim Sandberg, you can find in the DLC section. Relive those multi-stage boss fights! Patch 1.14 is also live, improving game stability, patch notes can be found in the Community Hub. We would also like to remind everybody that the Iconoclasts Discord is growing: get help if you are stuck, figure out the most effective speedrunning route and Tweak combos or just hang out with the community! Thank you all! How Iconoclasts makes platforming flowFeb 5, 2018 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunThis is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the difficult journeys they underwent to make the best bits of their games. This time, Iconoclasts . Iconoclasts is a platformer that feels great to play. As Robin, a daring mechanic armed with a wrench and a stun gun, you ll run, jump and shoot your way through sprawling multi-level areas, enjoying precise movements which balance detail and nuance with smoothness. It s a feel that s down to developer Joakim Sandberg s taste in games. Something I always enjoy in a videogame is that feeling, usually when you ve played it a few times, of being able to push through, he tells me. Flow, essentially. Almost all of Iconoclasts design features are directly about maintaining this sense of flow, of momentum in which you feel like nothing is getting in the way of your intention. And one feature you ll notice when you first start playing the game is kind of shocking. (more…) The more I play, the less I like IconoclastsJan 25, 2018 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunSo many people have been looking forward to Iconoclasts for so many years – we wrote our first impressions of it in 2011! – that it’s dangerous to venture any opinions into the fray. But I fear no danger. Iconoclasts, properly released after all these years, is fine. Kinda. (more…) Now Available on Steam - IconoclastsJan 23, 2018 - Product ReleaseIconoclasts is now available on Steam! Join renegade mechanic Robin and uncover the secrets of a dying planet. Explore a big world filled with intricate puzzles, interesting characters and menacing bosses in a beautiful platform adventure that tells a personal story about faith, purpose and the challenge of helping people. Iconoclasts reviewJan 23, 2018 - PC GamerRobin is a mechanic, but the authoritarian society she lives in doesn’t want her to be. Jobs like this are outlawed for regular citizens, forcing her to keep her tool-slinging talents a secret from One Concern—the sinister religious regime in charge. Even so, she still helps out around the village with repairs, using a wrench hidden in her basement. You can’t keep a good mechanic down. But after an unexpected run-in with Concern agents, she decides the thing that needs fixin’ most is the world. And so she embarks on a quest to make it a better place, accompanied by a group of like-minded rebels who share her hatred of the society they live in. It’s an engaging premise, bolstered by colourful writing, lavish pixel art, and superb animation. Iconoclasts is clearly inspired by games like Metroid and Castlevania (if only there was a clumsy portmanteau to describe a game like this), but it has enough new ideas to stand on its own and not feel like a direct homage to either. It’s also a lot heavier on story than these games usually are, with reams of dialogue to click through, a huge cast of characters to meet, and frequent cutscene breaks. It balances pathos and humour pretty well, although I found some of the jokes a little too goofy for their own good. A grease monkey is nothing without her tools, and Robin’s best abilities stem from the variety of gadgets she has hanging from her belt. As well as projectile weapons, including a stun gun and a grenade launcher, she can batter enemies with her wrench and spin it around like a Wild West gunslinger. And she can also jump in the air and unleash a devastating butt slam. But the wrench has other, more interesting uses. Around the large, interconnected levels you’ll see glowing bolts, some of which can be swung on to leap over obstacles, and others that operate machinery. The latter forms the basis of the game’s well-designed environmental puzzles, which involve finding hidden bolts and cranking them to slide increasingly complex networks of doors and moving platforms around, creating a path through the level. She can batter enemies with her wrench and spin it around like a Wild West gunslinger Otherwise, Iconoclasts is a fairly standard shooter/platformer hybrid—but, thanks to precise and responsive controls, an enjoyable one. Leaping around feels wonderfully snappy, and there’s a huge bestiary of enemies to fight, all with their own distinct attack patterns and weaknesses. It’s evident a lot of time has been spent refining the controls, making them feel just right. The art is impressive, with chunky, smoothly animated characters reminiscent of SNK’s Metal Slug series, and some beautifully detailed environments. Robin’s journey takes her to a lush forest filled with weird geometric plants, a sun-baked desert, an underwater city, the roof of a speeding train, and other locations, all of which beam with colour ...Wot I Think: IconoclastsJan 23, 2018 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunIt’s an odd experience to have followed the development of a game for almost a decade, only to have it blindside you. Iconoclasts, the slow-cooked passion project from prolific developer and highly talented sprite-artist Joakim ‘Konjak’ Sandberg might look like your average Metroidvania-type platform adventure at first glance, but that’s not the whole picture. Konjak cites semi-obscure Genesis/Megadrive game Monster World IV as his primary inspiration. That’s not a game I’ve played so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Thankfully, I came away very pleasantly surprised by Iconoclasts’ unconventional flow and strange story. (more…) The 10-year making of IconoclastsJan 16, 2018 - PC GamerJoakim 'Konjak' Sandberg is not very health-conscious. For the past seven years, he's been developing Iconoclasts full-time completely on his own. It's been a heady mix of design, delays and, occasionally, depression, but Sandberg's masterwork will finally release on Tuesday, January 23. When I sit down to talk with him, he says he'll try to remember to take weekends off next time, and maybe he could stand to plan things out a little more. But looking back, he's proud of how far he's come on his own. We first played Iconoclasts in 2013, two years before it hit Steam Greenlight bearing an optimistic 2016 release date. But Sandberg started working on it in earnest in 2010, and the original idea for it came three years earlier. With art inspired by Monster World 4—an old Mega Drive platformer which was re-released in 2007—and gameplay inspired by Metroid Fusion, it was the biggest idea Sandberg had ever taken on. Compared to his previous projects and experiments, Iconoclasts stands out because of its size alone, but also, he says, because of its ambitious story. Iconoclasts is set in a world where everyone's jobs are decided by The One Concern, a sort of government overseer, Sandberg tells me. It's a world permeated by a fuel known as ivory, which is considered holy and used to power various machines. The mechanics who build and repair those holy machines command almost priest-like respect. So obviously you can't just decide to be a mechanic. That doesn't stop Robin, the main character and a so-called 'rogue mechanic', from doing just that after learning about machines from her father. Robin's nest "It is quite narrative-heavy," Sandberg says. "It's interesting, because I didn't have a script. I made the whole game just like I made games before: I make it as you play it. Which is not something you really should do if you want to have a view of your scope. You don't really know when it ends when you do that. "At the beginning, the story is how I was thinking at the start of my 20s, and at the end it's how I was when I was reaching my 30s. It was always the intent that it starts very typical, very happy, sort of cliche, then turns into something darker. That's sort of how an adult mind shapes, I guess." If you cut Iconoclasts in half, you could count the rings on it just like a tree. But rather than the game's age, you'd be measuring Sandberg's. He got into making games as a teenager through the development group Clickteam and, after a few years of tinkering with small ideas, started Iconoclasts in his early 20s. He's now heading into his early 30s, and that gap is reflected in Iconoclast's story. "It is sort of a growing-up story, but not in terms of love, in terms of attitudes toward people," he says. "Robin is the center of that. She doesn't ...
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