Existential questions, self-discovery, video game conditioning, criticism of the Russian Orthodox Church and very, very large cans of caviar: the 3D adventure Indika of the from Russia refugee studios Odd Meter throws you into a crazy fever dream that you're guaranteed to want to talk about.
A dream full bizarre scenes, religious motifs and unreal dialogues, but also with artfully threaded threads that tie everything together and keep you glued to the screen.
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Is it all nonsense?
The W questions about the story and gameplay are easy to answer: You play the nun Indika, who goes about her duties in her convent somewhere in the Russian pampas. One day she is tasked with delivering a secret letter to another monastery, but in the process she gets into an argument in which she is taken hostage by a badly beaten prisoner.
Looking for help, the two wander through the countryside to find a place where the man believes he can be healed by God.
Indika wastes no time pulling the rug of conventional storytelling out from under your feet: it begins with a pixel art-style sequence in which you collect points that you're explicitly told are of no use.
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But if you're like us, you'll still spend the rest of the game trying to collect as many holy points as possible so that a high number appears in the top left. Years of conditioning are difficult to overcome, even though you actually know better.
Source: 11bit Studios
The same thing happens to Indika in the monastery: right at the beginning, for example, she is supposed to fetch five buckets of water from the well, which the game does mercilessly, only for the head nurse to tip the barrel that has just been filled over again.
Indika deliberately breaks the rule of not boring the player under any circumstances, and this is by no means the only place that ignores the conventions of a classic video game.
In any case, the message of the scene comes through: life as a nun in 19th century Russia is no picnic. Faith and obedience have long since lost all meaning here, and it is high time for Indika to break out of the system.
Avant-garde aesthetics
The developers are also excellent at creating an uncompromisingly uncomfortable atmosphere. You look in vain for contrasts or colors, the buildings are all strangely crooked, animals are unnaturally large. The whole setting is also permeated by a weird steampunk aesthetic, from motorized bicycles to a grotesque fish factory.
Source: 11bit Studios
Right from the start, Indika flashes the three letters W, T and F in neon letters in your head, and they won't go out until the end.
Seeing what the convincing art direction presents to you next is very exciting. The camera work is also remarkable: most of the time you play from the third-person view, but many cutscenes are shown from perspectives that you don't even see very often in films.
Like Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Indika plays with the idea of how much of the madness that plays out on your screen is actually real. After all, Indika also has a prominent guest on her mind, namely the devil himself!
Indika often has discussions with him about the big issues in her life, and although, like so many things in the game, they tend to break out of the blue, the conversations are entertaining to listen to.
The devil's speaker is particularly convincing when he torments Indika with biting comments and even in these moments he somehow still sounds funny and charming. The other characters, including the prisoner who you have at your side the whole time, sound as if they had just had a few too many glasses of vodka. This is also strange, but it contributes to the atmosphere.