The Well-Intentioned Paving of Iconoclasts
Iconoclasts is a rather strange experience, one that’s been sitting in my head for the past few weeks since I played it. It’s very cheerily presented as a lovely-looking 2D platforming jaunt interspersed with some puzzles and boss fights which quickly turns into an unflattering tale of best intentions and unintended consequences.
It even layers this unexpected tone on very efficiently, more so than I could, as protagonist Robin goes to investigate a thud outside her home. Upon coming back she’s greeted by the authorities of the dogmatic One Concern who have parked outside her house and quickly jump to interrogating her to make sure she hasn’t committed the grievous crime of being a mechanic, a job that she was not assigned by divine order. After they’re pulled away by a call, Robin promptly retrieves her oversized wrench from a hidden basement and goes an upbeat trip to aid her neighbours with mechanical troubles.
Misadventures of evading the totalitarian regime ensue, meeting other wanted outsiders of the system, all of whom have understandably different attitudes about how bad they are, especially when said regime tends to disappear people who break its rules.
Though the recurring driving motivation of everyone is that they think they’re doing the right thing, which isn’t exactly an unusual position, people never like to think themselves as wrong, but even characters who are on the same side of conflicts regularly disagree. This is even managed with Robin, despite being a silent protagonist, only communicating with rare dialogue choices, small emotive animations, or pictographic speech bubbles (which give rise to my favourite small adorable moment), clearly having her own idea of how to deal with situations, even if it clashes with someone else’s.
It trickles all the way down to incredibly minor characters, such as the scared townsfolk whom see their best chance for their loved ones is to appease the inscrutable structure governing their entire lives; the father who just wants to get into the prestigious City One, where instead of being disappeared for infractions, his family would merely get banished beyond the walls.
How the cast all deal with their actions and their consequences is largely what it’s focused on; some learn a lot better than others from their mistakes, whilst others can fall into denial about their responsibility, or steadfastly hold their course even in the face of a grim defeat. And Iconoclasts can definitely get dark.
Iconoclasts is also very good at communicating through its visual language too, from the various environmental puzzles to even what some enemies are vulnerable to, including the often clever boss fight puzzles. Finally figuring something out after getting stuck usually leads to that moment of realising you weren’t actually using your eyes and rarely does it seem like the game’s fault. Although a couple of times rely on quite-hidden secret entrances to progress, they often trap you in a small area to force you to find them.
Small flourishes are often to used to tell another part of the story too, like how some characters view the dogmatic state’s enforcers, simply by the lack of stars circling their heads when downed with their shotgun rather than Robin’s wrench or stun-gun.
I could continue to ramble about the various small things I liked, such as when a guilt-based encounter is easier the less you’ve antagonised people along the way, but I’ll finish with one thing that stuck with me.
There’s an emotional payload the game delivers by making you do something you need to progress, like you would any sort of environmental puzzle, and it’s the kind of thing that will hit all the harder because it’s done wordlessly. Being never told you need to do it, it very much feels like a decision you made, regardless of the availability of any other options.
The kind of decision that takes a while to fully realise what you’ve done.
