When I tucked into the demo for Indika during the last Steam Next Fest I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. I think if I had 100 guesses I wouldn’t have landed on a lot of the things that appeared in front of me. Indika is unique, it asks questions of you, of morality, and whether it’s a sliding scale. It asks who gets to decide what is right and wrong and why they get to be the ones to decide. Indika is like nothing I’ve played in a very long time and I loved it.
Platforms: PC – Steam, PS5, Xbox One Series S&X
Players: 1
Genres: Puzzle, Dark, Surreal
Developer: Odd Meter
Price: £20.99
Indika Review
With one relatively well-received VR game under their belt. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Odd Meter might play it safe on their next game. However, they go hard and double down on getting surreal with Indika, it’s safe to say that I think it’s a triumph.
To say Indika is a puzzle game is probably not quite correct. That being said, there are puzzles to solve throughout. Although, they’re more of an accompaniment to the strange journey you embark on through a warped version of 19th-century Russia.
Your initial quest is simple, deliver a letter to a monastery. The reasons for being sent are a little more unclear though. Indika is a nun, one who has been shunned from the nunnery with every other occupant looking at her with disdain and treating her poorly. You see, Indika is tormented by a devilish voice throughout the game. One that makes her question her faith, by asking some relevant questions. In fact, some of his arguments make sense. This only deepens Indika’s confusion and frustration.
On your journey of self-discovery, you will stumble upon an escaped prisoner. He claims to speak with God. Each has different points of view of the same religion and the game questions, and probes at what each other believes to see who is right or wrong. Or whether in fact, either of them can be right, wrong, or neither.
To be honest, it’s more a case of ‘the less said, the better’. To experience the story firsthand with as few preconceptions as possible is best.
Immaculate Presentation
Let’s be clear here. This alternate world is bleak as hell. It’s a frozen desolate land that has seen destruction on a scale that reshapes the land. Buildings cling to crumbling cliff sides, towering structures are splintered and fractured. Villages you pass through seem mostly abandoned. It looks rough. That being said, it’s a beautiful game. The snowy scapes paint an excellent backdrop, the grand scale and imagination of buildings tell tales of prosperous times.
The lighting sets the tone of the game perfectly. Oppressive and constricting with a hint of hope through those little flames burning in the corners of rooms or your lantern.
The characters are full of life with great voice acting. The Devil whom Indika consistently communes with was a particular highlight.
Points Don’t Mean Prizes
There’s no doubt about it, Indika is a weird game. There’s jaunty electronic music throughout, there are flashback-like moments where you’re suddenly playing 8-bit style games. Certain camera shots are akin to something from a film where they’re showing the drunk person stumbling around not fully in control of their appendages.
Puzzles are dotted throughout the game and are, for the most part, straightforward to not require much thinking. As I said at the top this isn’t necessarily a puzzle game despite what you might be seeing.
Furthermore, there are points you can collect which will ‘level up’ your faith. That being said, you’re told early on that the points are meaningless. You can gain points by finding religious artifacts, praying a shrines, and lighting candles at altars. It clearly seems like a jab at how religion can feel like points scoring at times and plays into the overall themes of the game and the questioning of how faith is measured.
Indika is a short game – my playthrough clocked in at about 3 and a half hours. However, it was also fantastic, so don’t let the shortness of the game be a measure of how good it is. Sometimes it’s good to play something a bit different and this game is most certainly that.
-Will
