Indika

Indika is mad, there’s no doubt about that. But there’s a method to her madness. You see, we could say the same about her game, which plays with its own aesthetic, interspersing a more grounded, somber tone with sudden bursts of playful retro elements, while growing increasingly unhinged as time goes by.

Indika is a nun in an isolated, snow-laden convent, where buildings are crooked and a gentle mist envelops the air. Like most of us, she’s a bit nuts, maybe even a bit nuttier, for when she’s taking communion, she screams after seeing a small version of the abbess come out of the woman’s mouth. One day, she’s tasked with delivering a letter to Father Herman in the Danilov monastery. She doesn’t know what’s in it. That bothers her a little.

We get that Indika is an outcast in her convent from the very first cutscene, when she is thrown out of evening service, and her colleagues react as if that was not the first time. Soon after, when we help a nun fix a steam hydraulic machine, the woman doesn’t seem grateful in the slightest and even makes a snide comment in the vein of “so you’re not stupid, after all.”  And it doesn’t take long for us to get where they’re coming from, for when we see a ladder on top of a piano leading to some planks high in the ceiling and try to interact with it, Indika doesn’t climb the ladder; she haphazardly stumbles into it, and knocks it down, making the nun that was working on the top, painting the walls, very understandably upset.

But Indika is not only someone clumsy who sees little abbesses coming out of big abbesses’ mouths, no, she also hears a voice in her head. It’s the narrator who first tells us that, which is a bit rich coming from him, as he’s precisely that voice, tormenting Indika at every turn. He’s not only deeply ironic, (“Were it not for the voice that was inculcating ideas in her, unforgivable for a Christian, she would have been a virtuous, and very mediocre nun,” he says in his best Mark Hammil’s Joker’s voice) but also seems to have fun at the nun’s expense (“Indika’s biggest dream was for that voice to leave her alone once and for all. Her entire life became a struggle, a painful resistance. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she tortured herself, the voice grew louder and more convincing every day,” that very voice says.) Couple that with his usually snarky tone, and we can sense that the narrator is laughing at her condition. At his own existence. Indika’s life is becoming a living nightmare, and he’s laughing.

Is this uncharitable narrator her consciousness? The Devil? A bit of both? At first, we only know that he loves to underline her flaws and mistakes. When she’s leaving the convent, she calls for the help of an old man, Tikhon, who lives in the nearby cottage. She needs him to operate a boat, but he calls her sinful, throws water at her, and asks her to leave. Indika’s reaction is to clean the steps, worried that he could slip on the wet wood and fall. She then operates the boat alone (it’s a simple puzzle) and stumbles upon a locked door at the other side, when she finally lets it slip, “Damn, Tikhon has the key. Ugh, what an imbecile.” The narrator, who doesn’t miss a bit, immediately intervenes with one more of his sardonic remarks: “Indika loved Tikhon. Imbecile was a medical diagnosis, so she was just using the word literally.” She had reacted like a good Christian at Tikhon’s offense, forgiving the violence done unto her and taking care of the man nonetheless, but the narrator’s remark points to how that was just a performance intended to hide the rage lying in her heart. Because for this devil, or for Indika’s consciousness, this is all that Christianity is: a performance.

The area that follows presents one of the game’s main unique mechanics. There are times when the environment fractures just like Indika’s mind, being ripped in half and overcome by a hellish red hue, while the narrator is let loose, berating Indika nonstop. This is when we can pray, to make the world fit together again and silence that grating voice. The thing is, since the act of ripping the world apart and putting it together again creates and moves platforms around, it’s essential to study the environment to see when we need to pray and when we need to hear some harsh truths to progress. We can’t just hide behind prayer all the time.

There’s a button we can press to make Indika cross herself, which has no impact on the game whatsoever: it doesn’t do anything, not even eliciting a reaction from NPCs. It’s an empty gesture that we can repeat as many times as we like. And that’s the key to understanding Indika‘s narrative. Throughout the many places we visit, for example, we can find small shrines to Jesus, where we can light a candle and watch our nun make a small prayer. The punchline to this questline at the end of the game is something you will never see coming, but for now, the important bit is that when Indika finishes her prayer, we hear a 16-bit era sound effect and a coin – designed in pixel art – appears in front of the nun to grant her… experience points.

Just like the narrator, this retro aesthetic loves to make fun of Indika, ridiculing her faith. “Oh, you think that by praying to Jesus you’ll get points with him, somehow? That he’ll like you better? That there will eventually be some reward for your piousness? Can’t you see, Indika, how ridiculous your actions and line of reasoning are, how futile your religion is,” the game seems to say – especially with its brilliant skill tree that, much like the nun’s faith, serves no practical purpose and only feeds itself.

In other words, Indika‘s main theme is imbued in the game’s strange aesthetic choice, in the abstractions of an RPG system that feels totally out of place because it is: each time Indika gets points by reading a sacred text, finding a religious figure, or simply by praying to Jesus, the game is highlighting how futile her pious gesture is. Her faith levels up, but what then? That doesn’t translate into something concrete in the real world. The points are pointless. Just like her faith.

However, the retro aesthetic also pokes fun at us. Back at the convent, when a sister asks Indika to take water from a well, we go there – walking very slowly because Indika’s got decorum (at least inside the convent, for we can run as soon as we get out, enjoying her newfound freedom) – and we press a button to interact with the bucket, then we move the analog stick to lower the bucket slowly into the well, and then move it again to lift the bucket. Slowly. Then we slowly walk back to the sister’s door and fill part of a barrel. This is when the number ⅕ appears on top of the screen, with its comical retro design that wouldn’t feel out of place in a No More Heroes game, making us gasp at what it means: that we will have to repeat the same actions four more times. “Useless labor is the basis of spiritual development,” the narrator says. That bastard.

You’ve probably already gotten that by now, but Indika is a strange nun. She sees things that aren’t there, but that’s actually okay (you could even say that’s part of the job), so the problem is that she also questions things. She thinks about them thoroughly. Eventually, she meets a soldier with an injured arm who’s a bit nuts and believes God speaks to him. Indika hears voices, too, and – just like us – is nuts, maybe even nuttier, so they get along just fine. And they have conversations on faith. “Why would God need our so-called freedom,” Indika asks, “if, in the end, he’s only satisfied with strictly defined choices?” Indika believes that the very concept of paradise taints everyone’s love toward God, for how can that love be genuine if it comes with the promise of rich reward? Paradise awaits those who embrace Him, while hell and torment await those who don’t. It’s not really a choice, she concludes.

So, those pointless experience points now assume an ambivalent function: they still represent the futility of faith, yes, but now they also indicate a path for true faith to exist – one that doesn’t expect any reward. You love God even if He allows you to suffer, even if He doesn’t extend His hand to help you, even if He ignores your cries for help. So, if He throws water at your face and calls you a sinner, you gladly clean the wet wood at the steps of His front porch. That’s the real Christian love.

The rub is that Christianity also comes with guilt. Indika’s backstory is told in a beautiful retro style because, much like the points and the coins, it’s also criticizing her faith: her backstory tells us of what fuels her guilt, of what empowers her demons. Her religion may bring brief moments of respite – she prays to keep the voices away, for one – but it’s also secretly making them stronger, louder, with each passing day. Because Indika’s religion tells her that she has sinned, that she’s a sinner, that she deserves punishment, that she must repent. Indika’s religion doesn’t ease her pain, it monsterfies it while giving her the means – prayer – to protect herself from it. But this means that the guilt, the pain, remains there as a constant threat, lurking in the shadows, festering, affecting her heart and mind.

It’s no wonder that, as we progress through the game, the environments start to twist and transform, becoming fantastical in nature, as they function as representations of how Indika feels about the world. There’s one sequence that takes place in a factory where the fish cans being produced are the size of a car, where Indika appears small, tiny, insignificant. Every structure towers over her during the game’s last hours, even the bells seem to be built by giants.

Indika is much like Indika, then, as its craziness can seem random and off-putting if we dismiss it too fast, without realizing what’s behind it. There’s this inspired moment, for example, when we’re in a room whose exit leads to the very same room, but with a catch: if we pay attention to this exit from afar, we can see our actions being performed in the mirrored room… by a demon. Indika has sinned, after all. But let’s be honest here, so have you. Many times, just today.

Hopefully.

October 01, 2025.