A captivating story that questions your beliefs, Indika is a story driven experience so good, you’ll wish it was longer.
What is Indika? That is the question I had when I watched the captivating trailer on the PlayStation store. Its strange, oddly humorous, and dark twist on gaming had me highly interested. A feeling that remained about half the time while playing Indika. I was puzzled by what was happening, and yet so fascinated with how it was playing out before my eyes.
Indika
Developer: Odd Meter
Platform: PS5 / PC / Xbox
Release Date: May 2nd, 2024 / Console May 17th
Indika is a game that blends the boundaries of many different playstyles. It gives you a main character with no combat mechanics—only a prayer—to explore a dark and twisted world as she explores her faith. Even as a non-religious person, the story and the questions it brings about are captivating; making you talk about it for days after you beat it. I completed the game again three more times just to fully understand the inner conversations, the decisions of the game, and how you yourself are even a piece of the puzzle.
It’s hard to talk about this game without some minor spoilers, so tread carefully from here.
Indika utilizes mechanics from all forms of media. Mostly the story and visual aspects from creators like Yorgos Lanthimos, AriAster, and Darren Aronofsky. This alone made Indika a hell of an experience like no other, because the visual storytelling is unmatched. But what Indika does extremely well is utilize the experience of gaming itself to break the 4th wall, and transport you from retro style gameplay, to 3rd person, and first person throughout your experience.
Indika utilizes all aspects of gaming and blends them seamlessly together. It feels so organic that it never draws you out of the game. For example there are retro pixel-bit style platforming segments to explore Indika’s memories, and the art and gameplay is done beautifully, so it isn’t just some offhanded filler. Instead the brightly colored pixel world is highly detailed and contrasts against the dark gray tones of her real world. The inspiration in these segments pull straight from games like Frogger and Pac-Man, among others, and come complete with absolute bangers for music. Jumping in and out of them changes the dark pace a bit, but still finds a way to blast you with dark twists hidden in the bright colors.
But the game is ultimately a puzzle-like 3rd person game, and while none of the puzzles are jarring in the sense of being too complex, they are all done insanely well. Each puzzle feels organic just like the transition in gameplay styles. They fit into the world and Indika’s headspace perfectly, so half the time you don’t even realize it’s a puzzle you’re completing.
Even better is the fact some of the more apparent puzzles are visual set pieces in themselves (e.g. such as moving giant pieces of a bridge while people yell at you, or a piano that slams against the wall as you shift an entire room). The game also has a prayer element where the world will rip apart in darkness, but be pulled together when Indika prays, which will have you traversing the environment in both aspects as platforms open up.
The disappointing part of the puzzles is they are so few in the grand scheme of things. I thoroughly enjoyed figuring them out on my first playthrough, and wanted things to get a little more complex, but that never really happens. Most puzzles are rather easy to figure out and only take a couple steps, which might be due to the idea of keeping it organic.
This is my overall “problem” with the game, it’s just short. Yes it is a cheaper experience, and overall a complete experience, it’s just done so extremely well that I wanted more. Even in the end segments of the game, when it tosses you into first person view, I was amazed at how impactful it made the ending of the game. I would have loved more segments of Indika fighting her inner demon (you) and seeing things from her true perspective. In my initial play through I spent around 4-5 hours completing it, and then was able to speed run it in a little over an hour right after.
That’s because every aspect of the game is incredibly thought out. The pacing, the characters, the music, all of it is extremely well done to create a thought provoking experience. It even breaks the 4th wall with “RPG elements,” which allow you to level up pointless attributes like guilt, but never really reward you with anything.
The game tells you multiple times, earning points is pointless, they have no meaning. But being a trained gamer, and your inner being trying to give something pointless a meaning, you continue to level up and carefully craft a character that is powered through prayer. Then the game rips them all away from you, then hands you an endless supply, and eventually the point is hammered home.
Indika traverses an incredible arc of being shunned as a Nun, to her faith being questioned, to her questioning her faith. She makes absolutely tough decisions, she makes mistakes, she begs for God’s mercy, and this dark corrupt world just keeps beating her down. It’s not a happy game, and ultimately doesn’t have a happy ending, but it is a pure example of how a game can become art and draw you into it by making you (the player) a piece of the puzzle itself. It plays on typical gamer assumptions to define Indika by making you her inner choice.
As I said earlier, I’m not much of a religious person, but Indika has had me talking about its ending for days. It has me pulling quotes from the game to discuss with others. It has me feeling emotionally connected to Indika, a Nun, and had me playing a game I otherwise would have overlooked. It doesn’t shove its religious undertones into your face, it makes you question good and evil, right and wrong, and what faith really is. Even the ultimate ending where the two main characters feel somewhat defeated, you still felt like you learned a valuable lesson in what the game is attempting to teach.
The game was emotionally hard to play. Mechanically it was fine, I personally never had any real issues on PS5 besides a few frame drops in open areas, but I played the game multiple times and never really ran into major issues I would want to complain about. Ultimately it was just jarring decisions like abrupt cuts to black, or blaring voice over audio, that hurt the overall experience. One minute you’re struggling to hear the inner demon talk, the next Indika blows out your speakers.
However, emotionally, the game does a terrific job of being awkward. It puts Indika in some absolutely brutal sequences, and while you’re not directly playing these events, the narrator and Indika will be describing the brutal actions and their consequences. The game even uses Pixel art to exemplify the most impactful moment. But ultimately it was the odd camera angles, the fish eye lenses, and the really long excruciating pauses on brutal imagery in the story, while the narrator questions Indika on her beliefs, that really threw me through a loop.
And the game doesn’t hold back. It hits touchy subjects in stride, it goes to insanely dark places without question, but it doesn’t glorify any of it. This is what I found to be the most impactful part of the story. Indika is literally going through hell, she isn’t becoming a warrior because of it, it’s literally destroying her life, and there’s no happy rose colored glasses ending to cap it off. She trusts people she was told to trust, she accidentally makes mistakes, and she is abused by outright evil all while questioning if it’s her that is making it happen.
But it’s the finer details of this game that you will grow to appreciate. Oddly Indika feeling innocent in both her voice by saying “sorry” repeatedly, and how she approaches the world, make you connect with her more. Watching her grasp her rosary in tense moments, hearing her pray to make the darkness go away, and just her simple animation in her eyes, give her impact in very important moments. It’s kind of nice that your attention isn’t drawn away in action sequences, or puzzles, and instead her calmly walking along and lighting candles is enough to make you want to go on. Even in the environment itself, catching glimpses of the demon, a creepy whistling nun, and a moving dismembered hand all add an eerie feeling to the world.
Overall Indika does storytelling right. While more experienced puzzle solvers might swing through the game quickly, it is worth slowing down and soaking in the story. It’s clear the developers, who had to leave Russia due to ongoing conflict in Ukraine, have a clear message to tell and they told it with absolute passion. Games can be art, they can be a lot of things, and Indika proves it.
