Guest article by Wing See Li
Iconoclasts
Repair For Adventure
Dubbed as the Ratchet & Clank of indie video games.
Figure 1: Iconoclasts cast in clockwise order: Elro, Royal, Samba, Mother, General Chrome, Agent Black, Robin and Mina.
Thanks to Snoman Gaming’s video of Iconoclasts, I instantly become aware of its existence. My first thought while I watched it is, “Ratchet & Clank, is that you?”. The game is so left field and it’s under my radar. Not only that, it literally comes out of nowhere. It’s how I imagined a 2D Ratchet & Clank game play and look like. Within the world of Iconoclasts, the same familiar mechanics you come to expect from the Ratchet & Clank series are placed in a 2D plane, albeit a few differences to the formula.
Figure 2: There’s more to Iconoclasts than being a “2D Ratchet & Clank game”.
It’s developed by Joakim Sandberg (otherwise known as Konjak on his social medias) and published by Bifrost Entertainment. It’s still astounding how a one-man team develops it single-handedly and it’s seven/eight years in the making. When I think about it, that’s, like, nearly a decade. How he managed to remain motivated without giving up along the way throughout the years boggles the mind.
Figure 3: Joakim Sandberg is the one-man team behind Iconoclasts.
Despite the game is inspired from Metroid Fusion, Monster World 4, Metal Slug and some platform-shooter games of yore, I reckon it’s more influenced by the Ratchet & Clank series due to Ratchet and Robin wielding a giant wrench as a main, signature weapon and them having an arsenal of firearms at their disposal. Not to mention, they both use their wrenches for just about anything. Though, Robin have only a stun gun with multiple, different modifications (similar to how Jak from the Jak and Daxter series who possesses one gun but with various mods and Risky Boots from the Shantae series who is armed with a Flintlock Pistol with a variety of mods in the Shantae: Half-Genie Hero Pirate Queen’s Quest DLC).
The game places you in the role of Robin, a renegade mechanic, who is on the run from the religious, despotic government known as One Concern. It’s set in a dystopian future that is under their malevolent rule. According to them, undergoing any sort of mechanics (unless you’re a registered mechanic) is deemed taboo. All geared up for action, she embarks on an adventure to uncover the mystery behind why that’s the case. Throughout her escapade while she attempts to evade capture from the tyrannical governing body, she befriends newfound allies such as Mina and Royal to name a few.
Figure 4: Robin, the 17-year-old rogue mechanic.
As you progress through your quest, you encounter Mina, Royal and even Robin’s older brother, Elro, before they join your party, similar to what usually happens when a protagonist agrees to allow new-found allies to tag along with them in a bid to save the world, galaxy or universe or someone in a role-playing video game. However, unlike Paper Mario, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Super Paper Mario etc, your team-mates don’t follow you everywhere but your buddies will be added to your party roster in an identical fashion to Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Each ally will have his or her own weapons, abilities and attributes that they can contribute to the team. For instance, Mina is equipped with a shotgun since someone stole or confiscated her dagger/knife. Upon utilising it, she’s able to target an enemy before she fires a shot at him or her. Unfortunately, her attempting to take aim before she launches a shot is slow. It doesn’t help matters much when she also runs at a gradual pace while she holds her shotgun. Although, alternating between it and making use of it to smash it against the ground or anything beneath her is cumbersome.
Figure 5: Whenever you come across your friends, they’re always added to the party roster in order.
I wouldn’t delve deep into the story seeing how unorthodox, complicated and religious it is. I didn’t understand, like, half of it. As a result, I felt completely lost in a negative way. However, this didn’t deter me from trying to indulge into it. It’s filled to the brim with plot twists and unpredictable surprises at every turn. But the colourful pixel art, entrancing pixelated locales which is eye-candy to anyone’s eyes, the charming characters, the well-written and page-turning dialogue, their unique personalities and the orgasmistic chiptune soundtrack makes up for it nevertheless.
Aside from her trusty monster-sized wrench and her stun gun, Robin can execute a stomp ability in order to crush enemies underneath her feet and let the Angrock obstacles crumble beneath her weight, crouch and crawl through tight spots or pathways she couldn’t normally walk through when the situation calls for it.
Speaking of her wrench, she can utilise it as a melee weapon in kind of a similar fashion to Ratchet’s OmniWrench from the Ratchet & Clank series, spinning the abovementioned wrench with the intention of deflecting incoming projectiles from her foes, latching on to a floating bolt to reach higher spots or far-off places she couldn’t reach otherwise, gripping a pulsating bolt to cruise through an electrical-charged zip line and twisting a bolt with the purpose of “tightening” it to unlock doors. To sum it up, her oversized golden wrench is versatile and it’s suited for any mechanical situation.
Figure 6: Robin’s wrench can be used for just about anything that ranges from fastening bolts to clocking her foes over the head with it.
In regards to her stun gun, it’s easily modifiable to include a variety of gun modifications such as the standard projectiles (gripping the ‘fire’ button will emit a beam-like blast from the weapon), bomb shots (holding the ‘fire’ button will let loose a tiny rocket/missile from the firearm) and the will to swap positions between you and the object you’re aiming your stun gun at. You’ll unlock these modifications as you advance through the game and they’ll become useful when the situations call for them. For example, a devastating blast from the stun gun can blow up a group of white-tinted boulders that are blocking the path to a treasure chest or a secret corridor.
As the adventure progresses and the story unfolds, you unlock craft tweaks which acts as upgrades to Robin’s stats by finding items locked in blue-coloured treasure chests that are scattered throughout the world. They’re either left out in the open just waiting to be opened or concealed in secret areas. Once you collect enough objects, you can gain access to tweaks by means of finding a workbench. In order to unlock the full potential of the aforesaid tweaks, you must head to a Statue of Mother which serves as a save point. Keep in mind you can choose and hold up to a maximum of three tweaks or switch between them at any given time. Be careful your chosen tweaks will be deactivated if you take damage. To reactivate them, you must destroy stone statues or defeat your adversaries.
Figure 7: The Chemico Contra members can be found near workbenches.
In addition to crafting upgradeable tweaks, you can also upgrade your wrench. At the beginning of the game, you start off with a regular wrench but as you advance through your journey, you get rewarded with a brand-new spanking electrical wrench that grants you the ability to electrically charge contraptions, machinery and turn on lights and switches with a flick of the wrench.
Regarding the buttons and switches, simply hopping on top of them, dropping an item on them with the purpose of keeping them pressed down or rotating a bolt with your jumbo-sized wrench can turn them on. For instance, the button triggers an interchange between blue positive and red negative electrical charges of the zip line but it depends on how many times you jump on the aforementioned button.
Besides the wrenches, the game also offers you the opportunity to add more ammunition modifications to your stun gun, opening up an abundant of ways to light up your enemies with your firearm and finding solutions to the brain-teasing, head-scratching puzzles you come across in your travels.
Sadly, the occasional, rage-inducing puzzles and the problematic level design every so often bog down the game experience and slowed the pacing to a crawl. One example of one of the godforsaken puzzles is the seemingly impossible, asinine puzzle in the Isilugar Depths level where you have to shoot a bomb ball over a steep hill in order to hit a switch which in turn detonate a row of smash boxes. That’s when it absolutely slowed the pacing to a complete standstill. No matter how hard I try or how many times I attempt to solve this frustratingly annoying puzzle, I couldn’t bypass it. This is coupled with the fact Joakim Sandberg picked an auto-aim shooting system (which doesn’t always work well or get the job done) instead of the twin-stick shooting.
Walking to a crate or a coloured box before standing on top it and pushing upwards on the analogue stick or the D-Pad to lift it over my head in an identical fashion to carrying an item over one’s head in Super Mario Bros. 2 feels and plays awkwardly and it’s unnatural.
The gunplay and the jumping are satisfying but using the wrench to dispatch enemies is weak. To make matters worse, it’s unclear to tell whether trying to aim my stun gun diagonally is clunky or unresponsive. In other words, even moving the analogue stick diagonally whilst performing a hop and pointing my stun gun in an identical direction is impossible to accomplish and no matter how many times I do it, it yields no results. The wavy pathway accompanied with an inclined hill within the godforsaken underwater puzzle in the Isilugar Depths isn’t doing me any favours. The Shard Wastelands level shares a similar puzzle, which requires the same method of solving which spanned a couple of days. Little did I know it’s a taste of what’s yet to come?
Let’s not forget the backtracking. Of course, it comes with the territory in 2D side-scrolling Metroidvania platformers and this game is no different. Due to the linearity of the game in terms of how the levels are structured one after another in order, it’s easy to lose track of where you are and it’s also easy to not remember where you haven’t been because of the sheer amount of backtracking which can really make your head spin or heaven forbid, can cause terrible headaches or migraines. I assume it’s because there isn’t a proper tally so you can maintain a record of how many collectibles you accumulated so far or how many items are left to obtain. To make matters worse, the inventory doesn’t contain a list of the amount of errands you undertake, which tasks or mini-missions are left remaining and which item you must give to whoever requested or required it.
Thankfully to remedy the ridiculous amount of backtracking, there is a strange contraption hidden somewhere in the Ferrier Shockwood level (according to an NPC, who calls herself a “freelance doctor”) which allows Robin to gain access to all of the previous levels she visited earlier throughout her adventure thus far. Using the wrench to turn the bolt lets her to select which location she desires to travel to. Once she picked an area after she stopped twisting the bolt, she enters the machine before it works its magic. When the device transported her to her destination, she can exit the gadget and continue with her escapade. In my opinion, the mechanism reminds me so much of the Warp Pipe system within Toad Town Sewers and Rogueport Sewers from Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door respectively.
Since Iconoclasts is finally slated for a Nintendo Switch release, it’s considered to be the Ratchet & Clank of Nintendo Switch games and it’s the closest the Nintendo community will have to a Ratchet & Clank game, gameplay wise. Furthermore, it’s the nearest thing everyone will get to a 2D Ratchet & Clank game in spite Ratchet & Clank: Going Mobile already existed. Since I already have Iconoclasts on PlayStation 4 and I don’t own a Nintendo Switch, I don’t give a hoot.
In conclusion, Iconoclasts is a roller coaster of emotions in terms of its religious and eccentric storyline but it’s let down with pace-breaking, intrusive puzzles, forced stealth sections, a stupidly huge amount of backtracking, an unfocused goal (in other words, you don’t know who the main antagonist is, what your main objective is or you don’t know what you set out to do in the first place) and problematical level design. To make things more stressful, the map is a clustered mess and despite the pause screen showing a hint accompanied with a description depending on where I am in the world, I still literally get lost. There is a saying, “Less is more”. Nonetheless, the heart-thumping, thrilling boss battles, the charismatic, likable characters, their creative personalities and the Ratchet & Clank-esque gameplay prevent the game from being a total bore. I’m looking at you, Yooka-Laylee and Max: The Curse of Brotherhood. In fact, I legitimately enjoyed Iconoclasts more so than Celeste.
Figure 8: This is taste of what’s to come in terms of forced stealth segments.
While I’m on the subject of bosses, they can range from normal-sized enemies to larger-than-life, screen-filling foes. Strategic wits, quick-thinking, figuring out their strengths and weaknesses and waiting until the time is right to strike is the key to delivering a humiliating defeat.
Figure 9: Bosses can range from normal-sized foes to screen-filling, larger-than-life adversaries.
Sadly, Iconoclasts is an example of how you DON’T implement stealth sections, especially when some players might not enjoy them. For instance, you have to mix strength with stealth to take down Ash and you must take the scenery of the Charged Atmosphere (Ferrier Shockwood) level to your advantage. On top of that, you must switch between Robin and Mina to hide in the bushes and on the surfaces of water (to cover your scent) with the intention of fooling Ash and striking him when the time is right. Additionally, you have to keep in mind Robin is more agile and versatile than Mina. To add salt to the wound, attempting to think on the fly whilst seeking out Ash isn’t easy, particularly when he prefers to conceal from his opponents, attack them without warning and remain invisible when I try my hardest to pinpoint his hiding spot. Applying stealth sections in platformers is like including turrets in them or trying to merge platforming with shooting. Luckily, that’s not the case with the Sly Cooper series when Sucker Punch Productions or Sanzaru Games knows how to combine platforming with stealth.
Regardless, if you’re waiting for the next Ratchet & Clank game, Iconoclasts will tide you over.