[Disclaimer: I received a review key for INDIKA through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
Release Date: May 2, 2024
Systems: Windows, Linux
Publisher: 11 bit Studios
Developer: Odd Meter
Time Spent: 6.1 Hours
Just a heads up. I'm going to do a potentially bad job with today's article because this article focuses on the religious aspect of INDIKA as well as the mental health side of Indika's characterization and how both manifest throughout the game. That being said, I know for certain that some of the imagery, symbolism, and literal text went over my head since I have never been a member of the Russian Orthodox Church and while I did attend Catholic church on a regular basis for nearly 20 years, I couldn't tell you then and I can't tell you know much in the way of specifics regarding the Bible. Not that having a religious background or upbringing is a prerequisite to playing and enjoying INDIKA, but I found that it gave me some modicum of perspective on Indika's journey of faith throughout the game.
And there will be spoilers.
Before we go deeper into INDIKA, we'll do a brief contextual dive into my history with Catholicism, because that was the religion I was a part of for roughly 20 years. I've talked a bit about it before every time I've reviewed a game where religion has been a focal point of the narrative; games like Blasphemous, Sagebrush, and Outlast II all have religion in one aspect or another at the narrative forefront. I ultimately decided to officially end my church-going after having received four of the seven sacraments, sometimes, I think, in mid-late 2000 although I don't have a specific date on when someone might say I "lost my faith" as I'm not really sure if I ever had "faith" in how it was often taught and preached; or even how other students in my catechism classes described "faith" from their own experiences. I bring this up because INDIKA felt very much like an exploration of one's faith and what the experience and definitions of faith look like to different people.
How Odd Meter handled religion and the process of how someone questions their religion and own personal faith was not the one-sided dump-fest that it could have been had it been conceived and executed by a less thoughtful developer. Indika is a nun who early on in the opening chapter reveals to the player hears a voice that she attributes to originate from the Devil, or at the very least, a voice of demonic origins. She is often shunned by her fellow nuns in what appears to be petty and passive-aggressive ways as illustrated in the opening chapter. After walking across the whole of the convent and delivering a basket of potatoes, she is instructed to fill a barrel with water from the well. The well is not close by and once there, the player has to press X to attach the pail to the hook on the well, then rotate the joystick in the correct direction to lower the pail. Then rotate in the opposite direction, press X again to unhook the pail and empty it into her bucket, then walk the bucket back across the yard to the barrel where you press X again to empty the pail. It takes five trips to fully fill the barrel (about 8 minutes of real-world time) and after you finish your duty, a nun comes out of the building and says, in short, that the other nuns won't eat after Indika is served and to not let her into the kitchen, then dumps the barrel out onto the ground. During this sequence, the voice brings up to Indika the inherent contradictions in the need for Indika to fetch water from a well when the nuns only consume water from a spring which is in closer proximity to the barrel.
What I loved about this sequence is that it felt like a perfect encapsulation of an orthodox view on faith, and even the voice tells Indika as such while she is fetching bucket after bucket of water. You may not understand why you are asked to do what you are doing, but have faith in the process, and trust in God's will. It is your acts that serve a higher purpose. It's not that the water that Indika collected was dumped out, but that the process of gathering the water, the struggle to do so, was an act of faith. Maybe the dumping was intended as a test of Indika's faith? Even before you collect your first bucket, the game tells you that this is your duty and when you complete your duty, you will earn 100 points once your task is completed. So with the promise of these points, you complete your task.
The points system, which is never fully explained for the majority of the game I feel is a brilliant mechanic that is easily recognizable for almost anyone who has previously played a video game with any semblance of a scoring system. You don't question the existence that points are important because this is a video game and they typically are. In all but one playthrough I watched (not in its entirety), Indika gains a level after delivering the basket of potatoes and right before you are given the task of collecting water, which feels like an enticement, "Didn't that feel good to raise a level and choose a reward, wouldn't you like to do that again?" And so you spend 8 minutes collecting water that will end up being dumped out, with the only bits of useful information gained from the whole sequence reaffirming how the other nuns feel towards Indika and how the voice feels about the contradictory nature of Christianity.
One disappointing thing about the points and their value in the game is that about a quarter of the way through, during a loading screen between chapters, the game says, "Don't waste time collecting points, they are pointless." When this in-game disclaimer came up, the connection between these points and the thoughts, prayers, and blessings typically associated with religion immediately came to mind and the message felt a little too heavy-handed. The message here didn't feel like too much of a reach or even a revelation, but I would have liked to have discovered that on my own without the game expressly saying so. I felt like it could have been better for the game, but it did make the end of the game slightly less impactful. That being said, I still actively sought out candles to light, books to uncover, and other religious objects to collect as it does feel good to see those points increase and level up, which is probably its own simplified commentary on why some people seek out and actively participate in a particular religion.
If Indika is a nun who hears the voice of the Devil, it only makes sense that she would end up coming across and "teaming" up with an escaped convict, Ilya, who shoots multiple military/police figures and we are told hears the voice of God. It's just one of those ironies that makes the player say to themselves, "Of course that would happen." While the first third of the game had Indika conversing with the voice in her head, she now has similar conversations about religion in general and the strength of one's faith with Ilya. The voice still interjects while Indika is talking with Ilya, especially after their first real dialogue while they're on the bike, but their conversations about the tenants and contradictions of faith feel like they happen less frequently until the end of the game; I could be wrong, but that's just my impression.
It is through conversations with Ilya that a lot of Indika's backstory comes to light, which is also where all of the 16-bit era game styles come into play. From those moments, we learn about Indika's life before the convent, her proficiency with the fictionalized motorbike, her relationship with the Romani boy Mirko, and the events that lead up to him being killed by her father after multiple denials that she knew who he was. It is during these sequences as the two travel through Spasov towards the church, that the players see how Indika sees herself as she makes her way through an Escher-lite-like maze, as a demonic manifestation of the voice, and likely, her guilt at Mirko's death. This revelation about Indika's past comes at the time in the story after she and Ilya reach the holy relic in Spasov, but a priest is shot during a scuffle with the city watch and both are implicated in the murder. Ilya, who was likely still upset with Indika about events that I haven't covered, saves himself at Indika's expense, essentially mirroring Indika's last moments with Mirko.
It is at this point that the game drastically changes from its third-person over-the-shoulder camera perspective to a first-person perspective. Narratively this works well because we just heard from a jailor about a man who was canonized after murdering his son and other children (sacrificing his soul for his son's and the children's eternal salvation), comparing it to his belief that Indika killed the priest, and during a scene in Indika's psyche while she is being sexually assaulted (where at the same time the points that we've been collecting the entire game drains down to zero and all of the metaphorical meaning behind those points and what is happening to Indika), we have the last conversation with the voice about the definition of good and evil, also being the last time in the game we hear the voice. "Just remember, good and evil, warm and cold. Those are just lines on a thermometer. God and the devil - those are you. One cannot exist without the other." I read someone else's take that since the voice is no longer with Indika, she is finally able to be in her own head that thoughts again without a creature, another voice constantly over her shoulder.
In the final scene, Indika finds Ilya who sold the relic for "less than five rubles" and uses the money to get drunk. Indika finds a pawn shop (or equivalent), forces the shop owner to bring out the kudets (the relic), and in a brilliant piece of storytelling, Indika sees herself in a mirror with only the image of the demonized voice looking back. Believing that her soul is on the verge of being eternally lost, she prays on the kudets as many times as the player presses the X button. Each kiss/prayer results in no change in her reflection, believing that her prayers are not working, god is not listening, or that she is not repentant enough to save her soul. In an act of desperation, Indika picks up the kudets which causes the player to receive 30 points and to press the X button again, dispensing an additional 30 points for each shake. After a handful of shakes, the game gives the player the option to either stop shaking/praying or to continue pressing X to their heart's delight. Only upon stopping, does Indika become frustrated with the kudets and she breaks it open to reveal that the vessel is empty, which brings up the question if it was always empty or if the shopkeeper had emptied it after initially buying it.
I'd like to think that Indika is better off. I hope she is.
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