INDIKA Steam Charts & Stats

Overall, it is a rather boring walking sim with a few thought provoking concepts and a couple interesting puzzles. $25 is a bit high in my opinion for what you get so if you're really interested I'd recommend waiting for a good sale and save it for when you're in the mood for a slow game/story. Being raised Roman Catholic and having learned Russian as my third language, I really wanted to like this game but the negatives just outweighed the positives too greatly for me. Details: It is interesting to contemplate the ventures of a nun struggling with faith. These thought-provoking sections will probably only resonate with those that consider themselves at least somewhat religious as atheists lack the foundation to contemplate these ideas: "NoThInG mAtTeRs! NoThInG hApPeNs WhEn YoU dIe!" The graphics are great, though not the most well optimized, and disabling the interface allows for good immersion. The pixel text is...a choice (you can disable it under the "Accessibility" tab though, which is kind of funny that they put it there). It makes more sense once you go through Indika's first flashback, but these sections gave me a sense that it was a budget decision more so than an artistic choice. These 2D Pixel minigames were fun but felt very out of place. The puzzles were ok: not difficult to understand and easy to complete. There were like 2 of 3 of them that I did think were really cool conceptually, but almost all lacked any sort of challenge. Biggest Issue: The main flaw of the game that I cannot excuse is just how painstakingly slow it is. Like this is what I imagined a walking sim would be like when I first heard about them and this game does not even use that tag. Right out of the gate you are forced to walk from point a to point b, then from point b to point c, and then between point c and point d FIVE TIMES (there is a run button but it is disabled for this entire section). You are constantly body-blocked by the companion you are traveling with the majority of the time (you can't go around him and must wait for him to finish walking to where ever his destination is before you can do anything). There's even a section where they take the walking sim away from you and you're literally being pushed along for about 5min (you can walk, but you're body-blocked by a person in front of you AND behind you with no punishment for maintaining your distance). The game certainly had it moments, but there were so many dry spots in between that it made the story feel even shorter than it already was.

I'm not sure that i've completely understood the message of the game but, from what i got, the ending was a bit underwhelming for me. Maybe as a much younger person where i viewed the world through black and white, good and bad prism, for me at that time, the idea will be a fresh, but not now. Everything before was quite thrilling so i still think that the journey is more than enough to experience the game.

It is not very common, that a game is built like a work of art, that feels like you had been to a theatre, only this time you would participate in play, leading the main character to what – disillusionment? – enlightenment? liberation? hell? Of course, it's only a game, no such thing would happen to the player himself, but it is delightful to to see, regardless. Or maybe it was just me, as someone expelled from orthodox christian monastery for trolling, mostly, it hit me in a right spot, this one (the game). But if you are also fond of Russian classic literature, and maybe philosophy of Plato, you might survive this game quite well, because questions it rises, problems about love, God, soul, freedom of the will and what is just, those will do you no good if you can't treat them like riddles, if your solution would be just throw them away... It is build like a charm, though with minor issues that I will not mention here, for maybe you would not notice them, if you don't know where to look. I a word, I do envy you my gamer friend, who have not played this game just yet and have the chance to experience it for the first time. But heed the ancient warning: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter" and have some fun, you will be played...

Great game! Beautiful visuals, great music, and compelling story. Whatever you think it is, it isn't that. I pulls the rug out from under you multiple times. My only criticism, and it's extremely minor, is the puzzling can be tedious in the way that it's often hard to even determine what the victory condition is.

I did like the game. But i cant recommend it. INDIKA is an interactive movie game. It has very beautiful world-building, very decent sound design and music. But thats all it has to offer. The story is short, yet it pretends to have meaning. Well, techincally it has, but its a loop from the beggining: the nun questions meaning of religion. Shes permanently tempted by sin. You wont be able to know much about her past or her future, because the game portrays her as she is and nothing more. There are cute pixel minigames which explain her story but only a little. From gameplay perspective those minigames are bad and ruin the atmosphere. The praying mechanic could be used more and had potential, but in reality we are forced to use it only two times during the entire game. Sure, you can get it on sale, but dont expect much. I thought i was getting something like "Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason" but it is not.

Indika is a very strange, liminal, and surreal game. Am I glad I played it? Yes. Was it good? Not really. If you're looking for a few hours of something deeply alien that is equal parts walking simulator and adventure game, with just a tiny dash of puzzles thrown in, this might be for you. I spent most of my time wondering whether any of it was supposed to be real or whether the main protagonist was just in a padded room somewhere experiencing an episode. The levels make no sense in a physical world, and the dialogue and characters vary from grotesque to plain bizarre (i.e. the whistling woman who is focused on for like 30 seconds at a random part of the game for no reason). There is a real disconcerting sense of lack of time and place. Transitions between scenes are typically sudden cuts to black and sudden cuts to a new location with a new objective. The trailer didn't represent the game well at all. I expected there to be more puzzle elements, but there are about 3 in the whole game, which is too bad because the puzzle mechanic is really fun and moves the story along with the voiceover. Overall, the tone and setting are very unique and interesting, but the execution falls short of delivering. 2/5 Stars.

The game is initially quite enticing but fails to conclude all of its narratives. It just kind of leaves you hanging

[h1][b] TLDR: A strange walking simulator with light puzzle elements that attempts to tackle the discussion of faith and religion in the most odd manner. A surreal religious acid trip through Imperial Russia. [/b] [/h1] [h1]PROS: [/h1] ➕Graphics ➕Deals with some interesting concepts [h1]NEUTRALS: [/h1] 🔹Just absolutely plain f**king weird [h1]CONS: [/h1] ➖Some out of place movement animations ➖Voice audio issues - cutscenes too quiet, non-cutscenes too loud ➖Inconsistent auto save [h1] [b] Content (Game world/Narrative) – [7/10] [/b] [/h1] The world is set in the early 1900s, in snowy Russia. Considering it's somewhat of a smaller game (not AAA), the world is gorgeous. There’s so much symbolism and meaning behind every scene, that, for better or worse, it's lost on most players. Myself included. The narrative is simple from a high level - get to the city and find a holy relic to talk with God. But there are layers upon layers of meaning for the narrative of this story. I would say it's….different. It's very hard to digest in that there is absolutely zero explanation for anything happening, so it's very open to interpretation and therefore the meaning can be lost on people. Also myself included. [h1][b] Gameplay (Mechanics/Difficulty) – [6/10] [/b] [/h1] Above average. This is about a 70% walking simulator with a 30% focus on some puzzles. The puzzles range from interesting and unique to somewhat frustrating, because again, zero hits for anything. Despite getting stuck in a few places, I found the difficulty to be on the easy side. [h1] [b] Graphics (Quality/Technical) – [9/10] [/b] [/h1] Superb. The world looks beautiful and thoroughly detailed that I found to be only let down by some rough movement animations. Things like Indika climbing or jumping can be awkward and jarring. From a technical perspective, the game ran great at 120 FPS, fully maxed. I didn’t use Lossless Scaling because it has native DLSS. i9-13900KF | RTX 4090 | 64GB RAM | 1440p @ 240hz | Windows 11 installed on SSD [h1] [b] Audio – [4/10] [/b] [/h1] Actually annoying. There is something wrong with the voice level in cutscenes versus just walking through the environment and talking. In cutscenes, the voices were so quiet I had to increase the volume, while in the open world voices were SO LOUD I had to turn down the volume. No amount of playing with environmental and voice audio levels fixed this. [h1] [b] Replay Factor (Longevity) – [2/10] [/b] [/h1] None really aside from achievements. There doesn’t appear to be much deviation from the linear pathways of the world. [h1] [b] Final Verdict – [5/10] [/b] [/h1] Indika is a strange game. Like perhaps one of the strangest I’ve played. It’s filled with moments that borderline on comedy, but with no punchline. It kind of reminds me of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice but instead of the horror backdrop, it's a bizarre backdrop. For my negatives, the biggest two for me were the audio issues, and the narrative. Audio issues I detailed above in the audio section - the voice volumes were all over the place and each cutscene had me pausing to swap the volumes since I couldn’t hear what they were saying (Indika can be a tad meek) and then have them YELLING right after the cutscene. Let's talk about the narrative, cause this is a mixed bag. This is a story about faith and the struggle of maintaining your faith in the presence of temptation. However, I have some issues with the way it was presented. I wish that Indika either leaned more into the bizarre, or instead focused on a normal story of faith. Oftentimes it can be hard to discern what is even real and therefore the message can be confusing. I am just not a fan of game narratives where immediately upon the credits I have to Google “X ending meaning”, because to me it just feels like it doesn’t do a great job at explaining and/or presenting it to the player. As for the positives, I loved the graphics and the game world. I loved exploring snowy Russia in the early 1900s. The world was built with detail and it looks gorgeous. The facial animations in cutscenes are stellar. I do wish that I could explore it more as it is such a weird and surreal world that only has one or two pathways which converge in the end anyways. To me, it's a good world when I want to spend time getting lost in every nook and cranny of each space. I just wish it was bigger. Indika is a hard game to rate and even harder to recommend. One one hand, Indika is so strange and bizarre that I would only recommend this to people I know well enough that have a penchant for odd things. On the other hand, the narrative and symbolism is interesting to explore and experience, tackling a subject like faith and religion is not a light or simple task, yet Indika does it in a very unique way. Ultimately, I have to say no, I wouldn’t recommend Indika. When I finished the game and the credits started rolling, I immediately audibly said, “What the f**k did I just play?” So while Indika has some unforgettable moments, I can’t really recommend a game where that is my immediate summarization upon completion. I kept waiting for it to make sense and give a shred of answers, but I kept getting questions until the end where I left unsatisfied. [h1] [b] Recommend? [Y/N] [/b] [/h1] [h1]No[/h1] You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR

I am not sure I would call this a game. I mean, technically, there is gameplay even more gameplay than some walking simulators, but it's more of a movie. Probably more of a movie than TellTale games. And it's an art-house movie to boot. If this was an actual short movie or an episode of some anthology like Black Mirror, I'd give it top marks, but as a game... This is a bit more complicated. The atmosphere here is great, but I do not think they went deep enough with kind of "insanity". Not really "insanity", but they definitely had chances to do even more weird stuff. The fish factory reminded me of Little Nightmares games, and I enjoy how slowly escalated to moving walls with a crane. There were 2 sections of delirium, as well, that were used for some nice and simple puzzles, and they looked pretty cool. But all of that felt like... Weirdness for the sake of weirdness. There was not much behind that. You probably can pick up some hints of deeper philosophy, but I do not think there is anything more serious behind them. Little Nightmares still had "themes" in their weirdness, something grounded in reality, something more tangible. Since Indika was on a literal journey, that went awry, it would make sense to somehow associate all of that weirdness with her stress and her coping mechanism. And it's not like it was not done at all: the last segment of the game did exactly that (and also switched to first person which made it even "heavier" and more "tangible". A certain phrase there even reminded me of my own past, when due to stress I started developing almost a 2nd personality, and resolved it by finally coming to realization that it was always a part of me, and not something separate (thanks to "Forty Six & 2" and "Lateralus" by "Tool"). Use of 2D mini-games for Indika's memories also worked nicely in this sense (especially as indication of a "split"), but the switch to them was kind of abrupt (exactly like a sudden flashback in a movie). Those games, at least the jumping on windowsills and jumping on toads, were also a bit too unforgiving, considering they were not the main attraction. On the other hand, I am not sure what could be an approach if the game was to be longer, even if it was something closer to Little Nightmares even, which would be like twice as long. Perhaps more sections with delirium? More interactions with other people, that would make Indika question her path and explore her past and her "sins"? But perhaps it would not matter as much, as long as the voice acting would be just as good (at least the Russian one is top-notch). Despite the criticism, I would still recommend the game even if just for the atmosphere and for the sake of supporting devs and hope of more games of this level (besides the optimization, which is abysmal at times even with 7900XTX). On the other hand, I am not sure who is this game supposed to be for: people from post-soviet areas probably will find it most relatable, but it's not as "attractive" as Metro games, since it's more "niche". At the same time it is also essentially anti-religious, which may not suit the tastes of those post-soviet people, unless they already question orthodoxy (at least). So... I guess if you are interested in soviet(-like) setting, if you are ok with questioning of religion's reasons (and dogmas) - definitely worth a buy and an evening playing it, including at full price. For everyone else - try the demo. If you like the atmosphere of the demo, then you will probably enjoy the game as a whole.

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ MS-DOS ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ Bad ☐ Decent ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful ☐ You forget what reality is ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Just don't ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Mehh ☑ It's just gameplay ☐ Good ☐ Very good ---{ Audio }--- ☐ I'm now deaf ☐ Bad ☐ Not too bad ☑ Good ☐ Very good ☐ Eargasm ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☑ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☑ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☑ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☑ Short ☐ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☐ Worth the price ☑ If it's on sale ☑ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☑ Never heard of ☐ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☑ 8 ☐ 9 ☐ 10