Indika – A Dark, Satisfying Narrative with Uniquely Diverse Gameplay

Overview

Indika is a unique story-driven game set in an alternative Russia. It focuses on its titular character, an ostracised nun who is tasked with delivering an important letter and must traverse the game’s harsh and surreal environments.

Narrative

Indika has a strong, hard-hitting narrative that touches on a range of complex themes, such as religion, sanity, companionship, war, and loneliness. It includes some dark and challenging moments that can be quite violent or otherwise disturbing. As the player guides Indika through a desolate and bleak game world, she is often accompanied by a troubling voice representing the devil as well as surreal and disconcerting visions. It will berate, question, and insult her, as well as undermine her convictions and beliefs. She is later joined by a wounded soldier named Ilya and the purpose of her journey soon shifts. The player also gets to explore Indika’s past and memories through a selection of minigames. These provide insight into her situation, troubled mind, and the choices that she makes.

The dark narrative is told in an intriguing and engaging way. It makes good use of thought-provoking dialogue, varied interactive storytelling, and emotive and believable voice acting. This all culminates in a climactic and satisfying ending that feels deserved after the gradual, suspenseful build-up that also serves to foster an emotional connection with the flawed and genuine characters.

Gameplay

Indika features a unique mix of gameplay types and genres. It has elements from walking simulators, RPGs, 3D platformers, and puzzle games. Additionally, the minigames involve a number of more retro-style gameplay mechanics such as top-down racing, and 2D platforming. This combination gives the overall experience a very different feel to more singularly focused games.

The walking simulator sections are fairly prominent and make up a good chunk of the early gameplay accompanied by regular exposition and dialogue to progress the story. The RPG aspects are almost a pseudo-mechanic since whilst players can collect points by lighting candles to pray or finding collectable items, level up, and gain ‘perks such as point multipliers’, this has very little bearing on the protagonist or the player experience. A loading screen even informs the player “don’t waste time collecting points, they are pointless”. 3D platforming is also a noteworthy inclusion, with a number of instances that vary in difficulty. The puzzles are largely environmental and can require a bit of thought, they are highly logical, however, and very satisfying to solve.

In general, the gameplay is very meaningful and quite tactile, working with other features of the game to convey the narrative and the experiences that Indika has. Tasks such as fetching multiple buckets of water from the well to fill a barrel reflect the monotony and tedium of the manual labour she must partake in at the monastery. Indika also experiences voices and visions that are not based in reality, a shift in perspective that is often utilised in the puzzles or platforming sections. Praying is a way for the player to deliberately facilitate this shift and is instrumental in navigating certain areas.

The minigames, whilst adding to the diverse gameplay and providing a visual and interactive shift that distinguishes the representation of Indika’s past, are much more difficult than the bulk of the game. At times this can be very frustrating and often serves to disrupt the overall sense of immersion in the story and experience. Following feedback, the developers have added an option to make the minigames skippable, a feature that was not available when the game was first released. That being said, the gameplay is quite forgiving throughout, emphasising the focus on the narrative. Frequent autosaves ensure that death or failure does not set the player back too far, often restarting mere moments beforehand.

Styling

Indika boasts moody, atmospheric 3D visuals with a realistic style. A cool, muted colour palette is used to portray the cold, bleak environments with a lack of saturation verging on black and white in places. The lighting is warmer and provides a dramatic contrast to the stark scenery. The minigames are presented in a slightly more colourful pixel art style befitting of their retro-style gameplay.

The soundtrack is unusual for the style and themes of the game which creates a unique ambience. The tracks are often dramatic, high energy and with a retro, chiptune style to them. This provides an interesting juxtaposition between the audio and visual elements. The sound effects are very immersive, including footsteps in the snow and mud, the howling wind, and water splashing, all help to create a believable and well-rounded playing environment. The voice acting in the game is excellent, and the dialogue is believable and engrossing. The narration is particularly good. It is an older male voice, which is eerie and unsettling, whilst also somewhat bewitching.

Summary