Indika
First published in GRIND IV, pages 66–69.
ASK AND YOU SHALL BE DECEIVED
I’d like to take you on a short trip back to childhood: think of The Powerpuff Girls intro on Cartoon Network (don’t ask, trust the process!). Professor Utonium is in the foreground, mixing all the ingredients for the perfect little girls in a pot. Sweet, sour and something charming. By mistake, the professor drops Chemical X into the mixture. That’s how three little girls with superpowers turn up, dedicating their lives to fighting the forces of evil.
Now imagine you’re in the professor’s shoes. You have a teenage girl, a 19th-century Russian setting and a journey of self-discovery. So far it sounds like a story as innocent as they come.
Except that a demonic voice, a fugitive prisoner hunting a sacred artefact to heal his arm, and the rigidity of Russian Orthodoxy are ladled in generously on top.
The result is Indika, a third-person game sprinkled with puzzles and mini-games, with a young nun as its protagonist.
An unconventional blend of realism with retro game sections inspired by Super Mario, Frogger and Pac-Man, which at first adds a sense of confusion but nudges you towards contemplation.
Thus spake
THE UNCLEAN ONE
A diffuse sound of liturgical chanting, a pixelated little girl who seems to be falling into the void, and golden coins you have to collect.
After you collect the last oversized coin, you wake up. Reality is something else entirely, and Indika is hauled over the coals by an angry abbess. All because the young woman dared to disturb the solemn atmosphere in the church nave. The poor girl’s apologies are no use: she’s driven out into the cold on the pretext that she has to deliver a basket of vegetables to another nun.
A male voice, in a faintly sarcastic tone, does the narrating. We learn that fate has prepared something special for our heroine. And deep down, I really do want something more for her.
From the first few minutes, you realise that Indika’s existence is far from a happy one.
The sisters in the church won’t even turn their eyes towards her, let alone exchange two words. And the voice in her head gives her no peace, even though she tries with all her inner strength to ignore the temptation of sin and repent.
She receives an important mission from the nuns, which surprises even Indika.
She must reach the Danilov Monastery with a letter addressed to Father Herman. She barely restrains her curiosity about what the correspondence contains, but she sets off in the hope that once she has done what she was told, she will receive understanding and acceptance from the community that got rid of her like a rotten tooth.
Since no journey of initiation is free of unforeseen events, on the way she meets Ilya. A typical Russian, escaped from the gaol, stinking of carrion from the arm tucked inside his coat, visibly affected by gangrene. In the spirit of the faith she serves, the nun offers to help him like any Good Samaritan. As time passes, it becomes clear that other, less orthodox motives are at work in her decision to keep him company.
Like Hellblade, Indika is a game in which the most important component is the narrative. Across roughly six hours of gameplay you steer your character through monastery courtyards and frozen plains, pass through a fish factory that makes you feel as though you’re walking through a scene from Iona by Marin Sorescu. And then arrive in Spasov, after some puzzles and
Festina
LENTE
Exploration is a little more cumbersome than you’d expect. There isn’t much difference between walking normally and sprinting; some objectives are mundane everyday actions, such as fetching water from a well, moving tins of fish, or simply sitting on a bench for a breather.
The most interesting mechanic is when the demon in Indika’s mind goes off the rails and starts bluntly airing her deepest secrets. That she detests the presence of the dull old nuns at the church, the infernal recitation of psalms thousands of times over until they lose all meaning, or her desire to satisfy her carnal curiosities about Ilya. The heavens catch fire and split open, and the path becomes impassable. To push on, only prayer can save you and land you on the right platform.
sequences from the girl’s past, in the form of pixel art. These intermission moments are the key to understanding Indika’s childhood, how she relates to the men in her life, and the reason her inner demon exists at all, a demon she cannot escape. On top of that, the things you discover, from icons and manuscripts to lighting the oil lamps, These ways of making the game feel repetitive, sometimes even annoying, may be intended to illustrate Indika’s rebellion against her situation. It was not her decision to end up in a monastic establishment; all her choices were preordained, and she was never free in the true sense of the word.
However much she struggles to do things the way society considers right, she ends up in an even more dire situation than at the start.
So why not give her thoughts free rein once and for all?
Indika is, categorically, a niche video game. Some will consider it nonsense; others will put it through several rounds of interpretation to make sense of every scene, presented through an avant-garde camera angle. Personally, I recommend you give it a go, if only as an unusual gaming experience from an indie studio that, through the sum of all its gameplay mechanics combined, gave me a feeling I won’t be forgetting any time soon.
generates a pixelated golden coin apiece, which converts into points. When you hit a certain number of points, a skill tree appears and you can upgrade your abilities.
The game urges me from the start not to waste my time on it, because none of it has any relevance. Could that be a reference to all the pointless sacrifices made in the name of religion?
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