INDIKA Review — Devil in Your Ear

Set in a cold, warped mirror of turn-of-the-century Russia, INDIKA sees our titular nun on a journey of self-discovery like no other. Her companions include an escaped convict who speaks to God and the literal devil himself whispering in her ear, and together, the three (or two?) make for a journey that is as unforgettable as it is packed full of philosophical questions and satirical dark humor.

On so many levels, INDIKA is not what I expected when it came across my desk. Then again, I don’t know if you can really build accurate expectations for INDIKA. The game is unabashedly different in its approach to storytelling, even going so far as to seemingly mock the method chosen to deliver the story (that being video games or your expectations for what an RPG like INDIKA might be). 

It has quite the story to tell, too. From start to finish, INDIKA is a criticism of religious ideology and modern (ish) society, a pondering of philosophical concepts of self, and, at times, a black satire of the human race in general. At least, that’s what I got out of it, and frankly, I feel a little stupid and out of my league attempting to explain the concepts present in INDIKA’s writing. Whatever you get out of it, however, you cannot deny that it is a fundamentally imaginative and interesting story full of deep questions and deliciously dark humor set in a slightly stranger version of our own world.

One of the main themes of INDIKA is how our titular protagonist’s struggles with the values and shame impressed upon her by her upbringing within a Russian monastery, and her contradictory inner voice, which represents her frustration at the hands of her contact humiliation, her so-called temptation and other thoughts that have led her sisterhood to deem her as a shameless sinner. That, or it is quite literally the devil. 

Unfortunately, I sometimes found myself agreeing with the devil over the other characters in the story. He frankly makes some good points, but he is hardly a hero in our story. Unlike the game’s gorgeously bitter color palette, the writing in INDIKA is anything but black and white.

Far beyond just a narrative device, however, INDIKA uses our protagonist’s inner struggle as a gameplay mechanic. There will be points in the story where Indika is overwhelmed by her internal monologue, and her angst and frustration quite literally cloud the screen in red and crack or tear the environment. The only way to quell this episode is to pray, which returns things to normal.

Cleverly, the warped environment as Indika gives in to her thoughts actually changes the platforming or puzzles in a segment, meaning you have to strategically swap between giving in to your dark thoughts and praying the “sin” away to correctly navigate to the end of a level.

Mechanically, I don’t think INDIKA is anything to write home about. It is a fairly simple platforming puzzle game, the kind you might come to expect from these sorts of narrative-based experiences. Though I’ll say the platforming segments you do engage on are remarkably creative (a favorite of mine is the fish factory, where you have to navigate through a conveyor of giant fish that would knock Indika to her fiery death), you’re definitely sitting through INDIKA for the story, and not the exciting gameplay.

The game seems to understand and even mock the fact that it is a video game and that your expectations of what you’d get out of a game sort of contradict the art of telling Indika’s story. Collecting points and so-called “leveling up” appears to be a pointless errand, poking fun at your expectations as a player.

You’re in INDIKA for the story and the characters, and by God, are they worth the time investment? Every character in INDIKA is a fleshed-out and interesting creature, but none more so than Indika and Ilya, our fated companions. 

Indika herself has quickly become one of my favorite protagonists of all time. She is a deeply complicated character whose childhood as a machine shop assistant makes her a capable and interesting problem solver while clashing with her status as a nun. She’s a mixed bag of desires, wanting desperately to be the perfect woman of the cloth while fighting with innate “devilish” desires that read to me very much as natural, albeit suppressed, human emotions.

She’s a deeply smart character who never once in the story says something that feels out of place for who she is, nor does anything I wouldn’t believe she’d do. The way she bounces off Ilya makes for some phenomenal character interaction that hooked me even when my ADD made the puzzle-solving a bit tedious.

What can I say about the game’s visuals that my screenshots haven’t already? The game is absolutely gorgeous, with a bleak color palette and some of the most excellent environmental designs I’ve seen in a while. The world feels cold, lived in but abandoned, bleak, and weird, contradicted entirely by the occasional flashback or dream sequence that completely changes the visuals to a vibrant, fantastical pixel art aesthetic.

INDIKA might be a polarizing game. The “gameplay” is nothing more than puzzles, albeit they are mentally engaging and creatively designed, and at times, the game seems to almost mock you for expecting it to be a game. While excellent, the storytelling is quite certainly untraditional, psychedelic, and downright weird, and frankly, I don’t think everyone will get it—It even made me feel stupid at times.

While I can’t say everyone will love INDIKA, I can certainly say that everyone should give it a chance because this title most certainly stands out as a piece of living, albeit frostbitten, art. 

Try Hard Guides received a PC review code for this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! INDIKA is available on Steam, GoG, Epic Games, Xbox and PlayStation.