Indika unquestionably defies definition. A swirl of impactful narrative and visual decisions are meant to resonate with the player longer than they linger on screen. It may be offbeat to a fault but this brief journey is uncompromising in vision.
Between each new scene, Indika harshly cuts to black.
The effect is a whiplash. Narratively. Mechanically. Technically.
A fall down a hole or a jump through a window or a gunshot ringing out.
Indika refuses to be cohesive, rejecting to make a complete circle of sense. Its most basic throughline becomes muddled with questionable events and indecipherable landscapes. The director framing the action lingers on the wrong thing. The writer leads us astray with tangential monologues and abrupt character development.
In a handful of hours, Indika transmogrifies into an enthralling video game, an obtuse walking simulator, a clunky puzzler, a classic platformer, an arcade classic, a political statement, an indictment on religion, an absolution on faith.
Length is frequently becoming a pervasive issue in our medium, one that often condemns many titles. The juxtaposition of value per dollar per minute muddies the waters for many powerful games that choose to make an impact in a runtime that rivals the longest films. There are times where it is a valid concern that can often impact choices a developer may make for their game. Does the story wrap up in a satisfying way? Do gameplay mechanics introduced evolve in any meaningful way or are maximized in their enjoyment?
With Indika, my biggest lamentation is that it was over so fast. Two sessions of a couple hours each, my usual thoroughness, credits roll. And, ironically, Indika is probably the perfect length for what it is. Much longer and the messages would be buried. Less time and there would not be enough meat on the bone to chew from.
Perhaps the frequent quick cuts I experienced throughout Indika were a strange technical quirk stemming from playing the game on PlayStation 5. But I can’t help but imagine they were intentional.
Part of me believes that developer Odd Meter wants to cycle players through various phases of unease over the course of Indika. Looking back, I’ve thought about Indika more than I’ve actually played it. I will spend more time working on this review than the time it took me to reach credits. It’s an interesting turn of the screw for the argument of length when a game pushes past the boundaries of its own existence and bleeds into other avenues of being. And for that, what Odd Meter has accomplished here is quite brilliant.
Indika blends genres and styles together but does so with a whimsical confidence. The game opens with a chiptune score and 16-bit animation, suddenly transitioning to a third-person narrative adventure game. Indika, a nun in a late 19th century Russian Orthodox church, jumps out of a stupor, the camera holding on and moving with her face like a TikTok filter.
When I first booted up Indika, I had just come home from work and was a bit tired, as usual. But I had been looking forward to playing the game for several months. And minutes in, poor Indika was forced to fill up and walk a bucket of water over to a fellow sister’s barrel five times–some kind of penance or chore. The process took about a minute each turn, a pixelated “_/5” increasing with each deposit. I sleepily grinned and around turn three kept drifting Indika off the path, taking more time than it should have due to my eyes struggling to stay open. After the task was completed, a nun pushed the barrel over, spilling my hard-earned, digital work into the nothingness of time and code.
The moment felt like a spit in the face.
And again, another intentional swerve done on the part of Odd Meter to buck the notion of traditional game expectations.
Indika establishes its eponymous character through no vignettes or text overlays or informative backstory cutscenes. Most players are likely well aware of the concept of a nun–a devoutly religious woman who spends the remainder of her years espousing the teachings and morals of Christian God. Nuns are portrayed so often in their black habits, clutching rosaries, muttering prayers, unflinchingly abstinent, and often tempted towards some nefarious end.
I don’t remember at what point it is established that the cackling voice narrating much of Indika is alleged or implied to be The Devil but his dialog remains a pervasive constant from the onset.
The very fabric of Indika is a dilemma. What does a reviewer choose to relay to the reader to entice rather than spoil? Does mocking gaming tropes make your product more artistic? How can Indika remain pious to her calling if The Devil resides in her mind?
Rather than Indika being allowed to speak for herself, the game establishes her as a soul underfoot of the very universe she resides in. She’s barely a product of her own existence. The other nuns seem to reject her presence. The snow-white landscape of Russia visually rejects the dark cloth she is enshrouded in. The parasitic Devil presumably speaks more lines of dialog in the game than his host.
Already, Indika is a fascinating study in contrasts. It tiptoes on the broken glass of insanity, crisis of faith, religious oppression, and the harsh reality of a world not that far removed from current day. Indika’s daydreaming perhaps represents her lack of commitment to the church. But then why is she a nun? Is that a question the player will even collect the answers to? Ironically, The Devil never seems to truly blaspheme. Rather, he is presented as an inner monologue, a constant passenger who may actually be privy to Indika’s private thoughts and speaks them out loud to the player.
Artistic or abnormal, either descriptor barely touches on the opening bits of Indika as it works to transition players’ expectations away from what it may be. The water bucket sequence, a joke or almost a waste of time. But is it actually a commentary on the hopelessness of duty or how the expectations we have for ourselves can easily be tossed asunder? In prayer, Indika watches a tiny, dancing man emerge from the mouth of an older nun. But why? To trip players up? Make them laugh? Speak to something deeper? And then the game’s opening credits flit into life, artistically framed by flame and the dark, cold stone of the church.
Often, Odd Meter presents Indika much as any artist would in their individual medium. Symbolism and deeper meaning are often weaved or painted by the artist yet can we always say they’ve shown their full hand? Much of me believes that Odd Meter understands what makes games art but also does not want to explicitly divulge every translation of that labyrinthine concept.
Honestly, much of my interpretation of Indika on a fundamental level and in its chapter-to-chapter experience come from a constant digestion of my feelings on the game. This is one of the more challenging analyzations I’ve tackled due in no small part to how simple Indika is from up close but how foundationally complex it becomes the more I attempt to encompass its whole.
Indika contains a core number of puzzles, being an adventure game that seeks to block progress just a bit. I won’t say that these puzzles are mechanically dense or even ones that I’ve never seen before. In fact, some of them are downright “meh” by the standards similar games have outlined. It is narratively established that Indika possesses some sort of mechanical knowledge that allows a nun of her age to understand steam-powered machines. It doesn’t make a slow segment of stacking cans to create steps using a strange contraption any more exciting.
But what Indika manages to do is throw players into what is presented as a distorted version of reality. Questions pepper the very landscape Indika walks through and it is hard to determine what is real, what is a figment of imagination, or what is a bastardization of the normal. Midway through the game, Indika traverses through a fish processing plant. Cans almost the size of a car containing… caviar? meat? are everywhere. Whales hang from hooks in a factory that seemingly has no bottom. Early on, a dog that would make Clifford nervous is treated like a common nuisance that might nip at the heels rather than swallow Indika in one gulp. Players take a crane and literally grip a stone bridge connecting city districts and move it like a Tetris piece. All this takes place in a world that barely knows what electricity is.
Is there a point in the narrative where Indika’s journey to deliver a letter coalesces into both absurdist road trip and an actual journey she is undergoing? A number of people are met along Indika’s path towards absolution but most are violent, crazed, or simply lurk on the edges of the game’s interactive space, just out of reach. These characters could house any number of meanings or explanations or, much like the buckets of water, be absolutely pointless.
Indika does spend a large portion of the game with a companion named Ilya, an escaped convict who believes he has communed with God. He is propped up as a foil to Indika’s dwindling faith, a kind of multi-faceted temptation.
There were a number of moments where I believed Odd Meter was going to allow me as the player to choose the next event in the game but, much like the most uncomfortable, powerful moments in The Last of Us Part II, choice is merely an illusion and would only serve to weaken the message the developers which to craft.
The brazenness of Indika to constantly change puts similar narrative games in sharp contrast. Indika certainly wants to tell a very specific story, yet it doesn’t wish players to become acclimated to a drip feed of story beats. More than the oppressive, grandiose environments that astound and overwhelm; more than the irrational sequences of events; Indika is propelled by the heady dialogs The Devil, Indika, and Ilya engage in with each other and the player.
The Devil’s soliloquies and banter with Indika–to which she infrequently replies to–are often breaks of the fourth wall, meant to provide concepts, questions, and thoughts directly to the player. However, the player is given little time to stew on what Indika is thematically presenting. Those quick cuts and shifts into yet another distorted beat cause any deeper meaning to ferment inside the player, only given proper care when the entire game has been absorbed.
In a handful of segments, Indika‘s narrative morphs into almost clear-cut action as the game shifts into 2D pixel art. A segment mimicking Pac-Man, a rhythm jumping sequence, and a straight platforming challenge briefly dip into Indika’s past, filling in only her most essential lore. These moments are beautifully presented with colorful, detailed art and music to fit the aesthetic. They are both pleasant, shocking, and artistic, just like the rest of Indika.
Most players who take this journey will likely be impressed with how astoundingly gorgeous Indika‘s use of the Unreal Engine 5 is. As a smaller team, Odd Meter extracts incredible facial animations for its characters, especially that of Indika, who with more than a passing glance almost looks like a live-action model. So much of this world is presented as dark, dingy, and bleak, its aesthetic quality perfectly encapsulating its narrative thrust. And I think it’s this stark realism contrasted with such strange, otherworldly features that make the package all the more striking.
Over the course of Indika, players are told that points don’t matter, despite a point indicator in the top left of the screen being constantly present and Indika being able to “level up” stats like grief. Much like every other aspect of Indika, a player’s acceptance is challenged. Why would this strange narrative adventure have points? What is the end goal? Are points like prayer? Indika uses player to literally silence The Devil and transform the world around her to solve puzzles. Shouldn’t points allow her some kind of salvation?
At this end of this stick there is no particularly delicious carrot. Indika in so many ways is a haunting experience because it poses philosophical dilemmas that I’m certain many of us have had regardless of upbringing. To attempt to list off or even contend with those is a detriment to each individual’s interpretation of what Odd Meter is using Indika as a vehicle for. While I don’t wish to speak to the larger political implications of the developer’s commentary on Russia and the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe, there’s a sobering amount of depth and meaning behind cultural oppression here.
But even for those players who are more insular or far too often wrapped up in personal difficulties, Indika is more than just a game throwing a bunch of blazing red question marks over the existence and nature of God or the greater purpose of religion. Even when Indika puts a spotlight on obvious debates, it does so with care and merely opens the door for players to begin to comprehend those larger questions. The Devil will literally play devil’s advocate and extol the potential virtues of a solid belief structure while Indika attempts to break it down. It is a piece of debate that doesn’t want to cement a proper side.
Much of the game’s central themes and purpose is laser-focused on the final fifteen or so minutes of the game. It’s here that the most extensive conversation of the game takes place, a kind of “boss fight” if you will. Perpetually throughout Indika, a scene would end in one place and the camera would almost shift to a different part of the location, focusing on a thing that didn’t matter. One particular moment sees Indika and Ilya talking but they move out of frame shortly into the scene and the action lingers on this one thing.
Right before Indika ends, players watch as the game goes from third-person to first. Before that, a minutes-long exchange between the two central characters that ping-pong weighty subject matter back and forth between each other, putting the previous hours into sharp perspective. When the game concludes it is done with an intentional whimper, one meant to potentially confuse and enlighten. But it’s a powerful moment that seems like it should end seconds before it actually does. Like an open wound with no bandage, players have to watch it pour forth, helpless to change what happens.
But like everything with Indika, it feels so necessary and deliberate. By throwing players off, the game latches onto us even deeper, yearning for that resolution behind meaning.
Indika unquestionably defies definition. A swirl of impactful narrative and visual decisions are meant to resonate with the player longer than they linger on screen. It may be offbeat to a fault but this brief journey is uncompromising in vision.
