INDIKA review – One helluva example of games as art

The mark of any good movie, artistically, is that it stays with you. You find yourself revisiting it mentally, admiring its technical components and musing over its message. You’ll likely have the same reaction to INDIKA, a new story-driven indie game from developer Odd Meter and publisher 11 bit studios. Because while there have been many narrative-driven cinematic titles, I can’t recall a single game that has as accurately conveyed the same off-kilter, frequently uncomfortable and boldly experimental feeling as an arthouse film. Until INDIKA.

INDIKA’s makers and marketing team have listed filmmakers Yorgos Lanthimos, Ari Aster, and Darren Aronofsky among their storytelling influences, along with the work of Russian writers Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, and Gogol. And really, at times INDIKA feels like you’re inside an A24 movie. The creative sensibilities are the same, mixing striking, surreal visuals and thought-provoking themes.

For the record, INDIKA is a (predominantly) third-person adventure set in an alternate steampunky version of late 19^th Century/early 20^th Century Russia. The title character is a young Orthodox nun with a big problem – the Devil is a near-constant voice in her head, taunting her and challenging her beliefs with his sardonic commentary. Shunned by her peers, Indika is dispatched from the priory to deliver a letter. This straightforward task  triggers a life-changing voyage of discovery that takes her across the stark, winter-blasted countryside full of strange, soul-shaking encounters.

A hefty 40GB+ download on PC, the Unreal Engine 4-made INDIKA is as technically optimised and visually impressive as the likes of Hellblade and A Plague Tale – which can probably be considered its AA cousins, due to their similar photorealism, mature themes, dark setting and extensive use of excellent, convincing performance capture. For the record, Indika’s facial capture is based on Anna Todich, while the character’s English-language dub is provided by Isabella Inchbald. It’s top-notch work, boosting player’s emotional investment in a heroine who is far from a naïve goodie two-shoes.

It’s worth noting that INDIKA doesn’t just stick to cinematic realism as an aesthetic style. It features 16-bit design elements and levels too. These are typically paired with pixelated arcade challenges (like racing, platforming and coin collecting) which serve as flashbacks to fill in Indika’s backstory.

For people who have been complaining this past week that Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is short on gameplay diversity, INDIKA should satisfy. While typically each gameplay element appears only once, there’s a mix of activities, with the jarring (but not in a bad way) retro minigames interspersed with more expected exploration and environmental puzzles. They’re not head scratchers but also not a cake walk either. The most enjoyable mechanic of all is probably Indika’s prayer mode, which she enters to traverse fractured settings. It’s so enjoyable, in fact, that it’s a little disappointing that players only get to use it maybe twice throughout the game.

Anyway, nothing really sums up the game’s genre blending, and conscious clash of artistic approaches, better than the launch trailer.

INDIKA constantly defies expectations that a cinematic game is a largely passive experience. In fact, the game loves to challenge across the board, from player presumptions about genre gameplay and game components (chiptune music regularly intrudes over lifelike scenes), to heady discussions between characters about pious obedience versus genuine goodness to… just being bizarre.

INDIKA will likely be too weird for a lot of players. It’s the kind of game that takes you to a canning factory that has literal mountains of caviar, and catfish the size of whales. Early on in the game, Indika is distracted during mass when a mini version of the Prioress crawls out the older woman’s mouth and dances to rave music in her underwear.

The game is laughably absurd at times, but also goes to some very dark, disturbing places, with two implied incidents of sexual assault. The ending isn’t a happy one either, but quietly profound (if a bit abrupt), as Indika finally accepts her personal truth, which is painful but liberating.

For the record, INDIKA is a four to five-hour experience, but that brevity encourages replays in a similar way to rewatching a film in order to pick up on details you may have missed before, and analyse creative choices with better context. The game also gives you the ability to revisit chapters immediately on unlocking them.

Ultimately, INDIKA is a lot like an avante-garde movie. It’s not always enjoyable in a conventional sense but it consistently prods the player to question. Surrounded by so many cookie cutter blockbuster games that visually dazzle but are otherwise superficial, INDIKA is doing the Lord’s work in showing that games can be more.

Having originally released on PC on 2 May, INDIKA is now also available on Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.

Get INDIKA on:
Steam | GOG | Epic | PlayStation | Xbox

Note: A portion of game sales will be donated to aid children affected by the war in Ukraine. Though made by a Russian team, Odd Meter’s entire 16-person development staff departed Moscow for Kazakhstan when Ukraine was invaded.