izigame.me

A brilliantly avant-garde and unorthodox indie exploration of Orthodox Catholicism.

My journey with this game was so off-kilter, and that is fitting for this game. This game first entered my peripheral due to the controversy it caused. Interest piqued, I looked further into it and stumbled onto the trailer for this game which was a bizarre, A24-esque, eccentric teaser for what was to come -- and I still stand by the opinion that the trailer for this game is one of the best trailers for a game I have seen in a long time if not possibly ever. After watching the trailer which in itself is like the advertisement of a movie, I had no expectations for the game but I knew I had to play it. So, I did.
What I found in this game really surpassed every expectation I had somehow, even though I had none to begin with. It is unlike anything else I have ever played. It mixes sometimes painfully mundane tasks with incredibly fantastical scenery, making you live out the boring, day-to-day routine Indika lives through which in essence humbles us as the player while setting up the story. We quickly find out that Indika is a troubled woman, haunted by an 'evil' presence that we come to find out through the story is the devil, which causes her to have outbursts and be shunned by the other nuns of the convent. It unfolds throughout the rest of the story and is well worth it.
The story of this game was beautifully handled in my opinion. It gracefully approaches serious topics such as rape , questioning of faith, man vs God conflicts, war, ostracism, murder, bullying, and even at times gender. These topics are not there for shock value. They are thoughtfully explored, never did I leave any of these occurrences thinking they were there to wax poetic or outrage us as the player. Many times during the game it felt as though Indika was actually an old friend I was on a walk with when I was listening to her contemplate about the ethics of religion and moreover God himself, saying things that friends and I have said to each other when these topics have occurred. To the people who say that this game philosophically brings 'nothing new' to the table with its themes especially in the theology department, my answer would be that it isn't trying to. It is touching on topics that many people struggle with especially growing up in or around the omnipresence of religion ( or Christianity specifically ). Indika fills the role of the religious rara avis, which in or out of the context or religion, most of us in some sense or another understand the feeling of being the outcast oddball. The story of this game is one that you can tell the writers of the show not only enjoyed writing but also felt connected to.
The gameplay of the game is fun and fresh. The puzzles are unique and there are also novel platforming aspects to multiple parts of the game. Because there are so many different aspects to the game you really don't know what is coming next. The puzzles aren't extremely hard but they are very unusual at times, which I enjoyed. The strangeness of some of the puzzles makes you stop and think about what to do but not so hard as to become frustrating. I love the pixelated parts of the game especially, finding them to be very fun usually arcade style gameplay. I thoroughly enjoyed even the walking around parts of the game, including finding and reading the religious artifacts.
Visually this game is stunning. It is set against the drab, gray backdrop of the convent and later the Russian landscape. The snow is beautifully bleak. The game spices up so much of the scenery by its use of the fantastic. So much of the game takes place in settings that mimic Indika's mental state. You find yourself in a fishery surrounded by building sized fish, buildings where furniture has turned all upside down, broken and distorted episodes playing out that only prayer can fix, and more. The pixel artwork in the game is also beautiful. Despite much of the game taking place in the dreary snow, I never got bored of it.
This game has easily entered my top 20 games of all time, and that is after just one playthrough. I am eager to play it again. The dialogue at times sent chills down my spine, brought tears to my eyes, made me think about my own relationship with religion and my own mortality. There's nothing more I can ask from a story narratively than that. It is a lovingly crafted indie game that posed more questions philosophically than many AAA games will ever try to. It is a haunting, surreal psychological-horror with themes I think many people, myself included, will understand and relate to. The acting, both for voice and body, I thought were really well done, especially for an indie game. I wholeheartedly, without a doubt recommend this game.