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In a Nutshell | |
WHAT I LIKE
| WHAT I DISLIKE
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Overall Impression : A- | |
| Developer: Publisher: Platforms: MSRP: $25 USD Original release date: Genre: Player(s): Play time: ESRB Rating: M (for Mature 17+) for: Official site: |
As a publicly-acknowledged atheist who often has to defend my atheism against friends, colleagues, family, and the occasional real-life troll lurking around a natural history museum (seriously, that actually happened to me when I visited the Smithsonian in real life), I have a casual interest in theology, religious history, and apologetics. I listen to lectures on the historicity of Jesus, and debates about the origin of the universe or life, and so on. I'm thoroughly inoculated against the standard apologetics of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, watchmaker, absolute morality, and so forth. I appreciate when media is willing to engage with theological debate honestly and directly, instead of relying on the typical tropes of the incredulous skeptic (who is also often mopey, depressive, and cynical) that we see so often in TV and movies.
I don't remember exactly where I heard about Indika, but as soon as I did, I added it to my PSN wishlist and bought it when it went on sale. The elevator pitch of a game about a nun who thinks she's possessed by Satan seemed immediately interesting and entertaining. The fact that the game is actually very thoughtful and intelligent with its religious themes (rather than simply being a crass joke) only made it more appealing.
It's unclear to me if some voice-overs are the voices in Indika's head, or just an external narrator.
It often points out contradictions and hypocrisies of religious beliefs and activities, such as the futility of her labors.
Naughty nun and pious criminal
Indika is a thoroughly weird game. I would not be surprised if it ends up being the weirdest game that I play all year. It's a strange mix of walking sim, puzzle-platformer, and retro arcade. It's part Hellblade, part Edith Finch, maybe even part Sonic the Hedgehog, and very Russian.
Put simply, the protagonist, Indika, is a woman who was sent to an Orthodox convent to become a nun, against her will, because of some perceived sin. She doesn't want to be there, but she's a genuinely nice and obedient person who fulfills her duties to the best of her abilities. Unfortunately for her, the "best of her abilities" isn't good enough. You see, she hears voices in her head, and sees visions of demons, that make her do and say things that are not quite appropriate, and which have earned her the severe disapproval of the other nuns.
One day, one of the nuns at the convent sends her out on an errand to deliver a letter to a monastery in a neighboring town. On the way, she encounters an escaped convict, named Ilya, who believes that God talks to him, and that he is kept alive by an explicit miracle from God. He has a gangrenous arm, but has survived with it for weeks without amputation, and without succumbing to sepsis. The 2 are an unlikely and ironic pair, a nun who thinks she is possessed by Satan, and a convict who thinks he is one of God's chosen people. They decide to accompany each other on a quest to a cathedral, where they hope a holy artifact can bless them both with a miracle -- to heal Ilya's arm, and to exorcise Indika's demonic possession.
Indika questions why God would make people broken, and give them free will, only to demand piety and obedience.
The concept is darkly humorous, and the game plays this humor up throughout. But it also uses the dichotomy of the 2 characters (and their specific predicaments) to explore the ideas of piety, morality, sin, free will, and the existence of a soul. And it does so earnestly and honestly, despite the wacky, whimsical nature of the circ*mstances and the actual game. The questions that the game poses could potentially have been pulled straight out of any apologetics book, or from an episode of The Atheist Experience.
Because Indika has a habit of making frequent small mistakes, which she often attributes to "sin", she is particularly interested in the idea of the moral equivalence of different sins. Specifically, can an accumulation of little sins add up to the equivalent of a larger, mortal sin like murder? And if so, how many such minor sins would one have to commit to damn themself to hell, the same as a murderer? Since Ilya sees himself as destined by God for a greater purpose, he is particularly interested in the ideas of pre-destination and free will. The 2 characters go back and forth about these topics (and others) several times throughout their journey together.
Losing faith
Both narratively and mechanically, the game seems highly skeptical of religious belief, and of the existence of God. Not only do the characters cast doubt and have difficult questions that they struggle to reconcile with their faith, but the mechanics of the game represent religious belief as empty, hollow, and ultimately meaningless. It's hard to talk about the specifics without basically spoiling the game, but I'll try...
Point are only used to score more points.
Basically, I don't think the voices in Indika's head are actually demons. They seem to be more a symptom of mental illness, which (this being the early 1900's in revolutionary Russia) is left un-diagnosed and un-treated.
Indika can earn experience points by performing many pious acts over the course of the game, such as completing mission objectives, praying, lighting candles in veneration shrines, collecting religious artifacts, and playing various mini-games. But the game is very explicit right up front, that "points are pointless". They unlock perks that don't do anything other than increase the rate at which Indika earns points. The implication, of course, is that faith is ultimately self-serving and has no broader utility.
Indika can also pray to try to make the voices go away temporarily. This is even used in several puzzles throughout the game to excellent effect. At some points in the game, Indika has, what I can only describe as a "demonic episode", that reshapes the reality around her into a more hellish landscape and breaks apart the path of forward progress. By praying, she can toggle between these 2 versions of reality in real-time, allowing her to traverse paths that were not otherwise fully accessible in either version of reality. But it's never permanent. As soon as Indika stops focusing her mind on the prayer, the voices come back, again implying that it's all just in her head. Unfortunately, there's only like 2 or 3 of these reality-warping puzzles throughout the game.
Indika's prayers can restore a shattered reality.
More specifically, Indika's faith and mental illness feed into each. The game explores religious guilt. Indika seems to be a pretty good person, albeit a very fallible one. She's kind, empathetic, obedient, and always willing to go out of her way to help those in need. She puts up with a sh*t-load of harassment and bullying from the other nuns, who don't like her because she is different.
Yet despite being a generally good person, her religious guilt has poisoned her mind and made her think that she is evil and in need of saving -- when really she's probably just a little bit schizophrenic, and needs psychiatric help. Of course, this is turn-of-the-20th-century Russia, and so effective treatments for schizophrenia (or other mental illnesses) are practically non-existent. In fact, any "treatment" that she would likely receive in that place and time would likely be institutionalization or lobotomization that would border on outright torture. So not only is Indika arguing that religious belief is pointless; it's also arguing that it may be outright harmful and psychologically toxic.
SHOW SPOILER HIDE SPOILER
The ending of the game really drives this home. Just prior to the final scene of the game, Indika is raped. Because she's a nun who has taken a vow of chastity, she sees this as a mortal sin of her own (rather than the rapist committing a sin against her). It's a scathing commentary on how religious authorities often blame victims, as a way of maintaining their patriarchal power structure. She loses all of her accumulated points, as she embraces the demon within her -- effectively losing her faith.
In the final scene, Indika sees herself as the imaginary demon that's been talking in her head all game long. She goes to the Kudets in the hopes that it will re-affirm her faith and exorcise this demon. The player can shake the Kudets to collect points from it indefinitely. As many points as you want. But it doesn't do anything. Indika has realized that faith is hollow. Instead of collecting points, the player is expected to just put the Kudets down, walk away, and leave Indika's faith behind.
Indika finally loses her faith after finding that the Kudets is hollow and has no magical properties.
At this point, freed from the burden of her religious guilt (and possibly in the belief in literal demons), the demon disappears, and Indika sees herself as ... herself. She realizes that she is not possessed by a demon, but that the voices in her head are her own voices. They are a part of her that she just has to live with, and which she shouldn't feel guilty about.
Furthermore, the game emphasizes that all of her suffering and hardships were in vain. No matter how hard she tries to be faithful and pious, there will never be a reward because the supposed rewards aren't real. It's all just hollow make-believe. There is no God judging her, and no devil tempting her. She is responsible for her own actions, and has only her own standards to live up to. She is finally free of the burden of her religious belief.
Little puzzles; big questions
While I really liked the prayer puzzles, they are sadly few and far between. Most of the puzzles are less inventive and less visually interesting. But even so, they all seem to be deceptively simple. I found that whenever I was struggling with a puzzle, it wasn't because the puzzle was overly hard or obtuse; I was just over-thinking it, and the solution was way more obvious than I thought. Maybe you could say that the puzzles are "bad" because of this, but I felt like they employed clever red herrings to make them seem slightly more complicated than they actually were. I actually kind of wonder if this was done deliberately, as a way of symbolically implying that people overthink religion and apologetics, but that's probably a bit of reaching on my part.
Puzzles can be absurd, and reflect Indika's lose grip on reality.
I also suffered from quite a few cheap deaths, which I would usually complain about. But I actually didn't mind those cheap deaths as much here. The demons in Indika's head always have something snarky to say when she dies, and if the game didn't throw the odd curve-ball at the player that forces an un-expected instant death, then the player might never hear these dialogues. We could argue about whether there are too many cheap deaths, but I do feel that the game is actually better for having some of them.
The weirdness of the game also feels like it gets toned down as the game goes on. There's surreal and uncanny imagery throughout, but the overtly weird stuff just kind of stops pretty early. It sets expectations for weirdness that the game then fails to live up to. I'm not sure if this is meant to represent Indika slowly losing her faith and not believing in the supernatural things that she thought she was seeing. Even if that's the case, it's still disappointing.
Disappointments with the puzzles and lack of whacky stuff in the back half of the game does not come close to ruining the game as a whole though. I think Indika is a wonderful and thought-provoking little story that does a good job of supplementing its narrative concepts with simple gameplay concepts. Some people will probably dismiss this game as little more than a "walking simulator", and from a ludic standpoint, they wouldn't be that far off. But the gameplay really does inform the story and vice versa. Neither works without the other. Indika's story of losing her faith is clearly critical and skeptical of religious conviction, but it never degrades to strawmanning the religious believers. These are honest and forthright conversations that closely resemble the questions that I've heard from other people who were in the process of de-converting from religion. It's a bit un-even, but still a thoroughly unique experience in the video game medium, and I loved it!
Indika is a critical, but honest and forthright examination of religious belief and de-conversion.
