Lose your religion in the latest game from 11 Bit Studios
“I don’t know what to say about this game.” Those are the initial thoughts we have when talking about INDIKA.
INDIKA takes place in an alternate history late 19th century/ early 20th century Russia. We play a nun named Indika and fucking everybody hates our guts, man. We work in a monastery and do our best to accomplish menial tasks because no one wants to be around us. And that’s how the game starts.
It spins from there, because Indika battles demons, inner and outer, to take those little tasks and somehow blow them up out of proportion, all while falling deeper and deeper into a strange level of schizophrenia that involves Satan speaking to her in her head, causing her to approach her life in strange, off-kilter ways. In one scene we have to deliver a simple letter as long as we don’t open it, but Satan teases and pushes us to re-evaluate what is wrong or right about opening the letter.
These kinds of small situations escalate, and soon we’re spinning out of control, fighting with Indika’s own past (through wild retro sequences) and how she got to this point in her life, and ultimately what comes next.
The game has a lot to say about religion and belief systems, going so far as throwing in a sort of upgrade tree that doesn’t even really matter because there’s no combat. It’s about being pious, and how that is or isn’t the right thing to do at times.
Indika bends the perception of what a game is and can be, and we really dig the outcome.
This review was based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. It first appeared on The SideQuest LIVE on May 29, 2024. Images and video courtesy the publisher.
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