Indika Review

I…I’m not even really sure where to start with Indika. It’s bizarre, fascinating, confusing, interesting and – above all – an experience. It certainly won’t be for everyone, but if you’re after something a bit different then Indika will fill that need, and then some.

It is primarily a 3rd person narrative adventure. We follow the tale of the titular Indika, a young nun seemingly outcast by her sisterhood for reasons that over the next several hours will become apparent. A completely off-kilter opening sets the tone for the entire game, from dream-like pixel art to the full 3D environments and characters, all shot and framed like a typical arthouse-style film with funky camera use and effects. It’s enough to grab our interest certainly, and it’s about half way through one of the games opening mundane tasks – here, filling a bucket with water from the nearby well – that we realise we’re in for something a little bit different.

A very slow open sets the scene, but it’s not long before we’re outside these walls

Indika longs to leave the nunnery it seems, so when the chance to do so in order to deliver a letter comes, she makes the most of it. From here, we learn more about her past, her thoughts and feelings, and her place in the world. She soon meets Ilya, an escaped convict on a mission from God, and things take a turn from the weird to outright bizarre.

Odd Meter mesh mundane moments with outlandish visuals and tasks, all while snap-cutting scenes and never really giving us more than the absolute bare minimum to go on while we try to keep up with the plot. Indika is haunted by her inner voices, often struggling to determine what’s real and what’s a figment of her imagination.

Some of the better moments come in the form of these puzzles – praying will revert things back to normal allowing us to traverse areas of the map otherwise inaccessible

Occasional puzzle segments see her needing to pray to flick between a skewed, stretched vision of her surrounds and the real world, while others play with reality in different ways. It’s never less than interesting, if not always enjoyable, and a late game sequence involving a crane and bridges is both funny in premise and utterly out of left field in the context of what we were doing in that moment. The 2D dream-like sequences are well implemented and offer some more context as to why Indika is who – and where – she is.

Underpinning all of the weirdness is a strong religious-themed story, complete with various commentary on religion as a whole as well as how it fits in the world of Indika. As a non-religious person I feel like a lot of the context was lost on me, though Odd Meter do provide plenty of trinkets around the levels to help us get the basic concept. No spoilers here, but it all leads to an ending that for the first time in ages had me actually searching the internet for help and to see what others thought.

Once the credits rolled I sat and thought back on my time with Indika, and I keep flipping between it being too clever for my simple mind and it just being confusing for confusing sake. The smash cut scenes tended to cut off dialogue (not entirely sure if that was intentional or not), no-one talks straight, and the religious themes are out of my wheelhouse, though it’s clear at least partly that shots are indeed being fired.

These 2D segments occur every few levels and fill in the backstory of Indika, as well as offering up a variety of gameplay types

Conclusion

Indika will no doubt be one the most unique games we play this year, if not one of the best. It’s themes are both layered thick and somewhat confusing and the odd pacing means we can never really settle into the flow of things. We still found some fun to be had, mainly in the weird settings and 2D sequences, and those with a bit more of an open mind will no doubt enjoy it, but it certainly won’t be for everyone.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.

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Good
  • Weird can be good, and for the most part here it is at least interesting
  • We did like some of the odd scene presentation and camera angles...
Bad
  • ...even if scenes seemed to cut short during dialogue
  • Sometimes a bit too odd and confusing
7
Good
Written by
I've been gaming since Spy vs Spy on the Master System, growing up as a Sega kid before realising the joy of multi-platform gaming. These days I can mostly be found on smaller indie titles, the occasional big RPG and doing poorly at Rainbow Six: Siege. Gamertag: Enaksan

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