God and the devil fight for a nun’s soul in video game Indika

Indika cuts an unlikely figure as a gaming heroine. Though handy with a wrench, she’s less concerned with saving the world and more with saving her soul. In place of a utility belt or gun holster, she wears a flowing robe and wimple. As a nun in a 19th-century Russian monastery, the clothes are an essential part of the job.

This ultra-stylish game from Russian studio Odd Meter tells the story of one nun’s dramatic struggle with her faith. The development team are originally from Moscow and they felt uneasy about how their game’s critique of the Russian Orthodox church would be viewed by Putin’s government. Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, most of the developers decided to move to Kazakhstan for their own safety. In the run-up to the game’s release, they went public with their strong anti-war stance.

“In Russia the government always reminds you: ‘If you say something wrong, we’ll put you in jail’,” says the game’s writer and director, Dmitry Svetlow. “I didn’t feel comfortable living in a place where I was threatened like that.”

Players begin the game trudging through the snow, performing mundane tasks for the mother superior of an austere nunnery. Before long a diabolical narrator begins questioning the value of Indika’s actions and, by extension, her entire religion. You soon realise this narrator is not just speaking to the player — Indika can hear the devil whispering in her ear.

Shunned by the other nuns, she’s relieved to be given a letter to deliver to a neighbouring monastery. As Indika journeys across the bleak wintry landscape, her internal conflict is projected psychedelically on to the world around her. She joins up with escaped convict Ilya, who becomes her foil — where she hears the devil, he receives messages from God. The pair embark on a quest to find a religious artefact with healing properties. She seeks to redeem her soul, he to heal his gravely wounded arm.

The gameplay is rather simple. You are mainly walking around or engaging in light platforming and environmental puzzles. These serve as the backdrop to the real action: the metaphysical war playing out in Indika’s mind. She debates topics such as sin and the nature of the soul with Ilya and the devilish voice in her head. While games often explore ideas of morality and faith, rarely are these subjects so explicitly grounded in real-world religions.

“Games are grown-up entertainment now,” says Svetlow, “the industry is starting to create more serious, sophisticated stories.” Other games that have tackled questions of religion include the thoughtful exploration of fictional faiths in the Fallout and Baldur’s Gate series, or the more artistic approach to metaphysical topics in indie games Journey and That Dragon, Cancer.

Indika’s harshly critical view of the Russian church was inspired by Svetlow’s own atheist awakening. After a childhood of church services and pilgrimages, he renounced his faith when he was 15. “The main idea I took away from the Russian Orthodox religion is that you should hate yourself constantly,” he says wryly. “You must praise, obey and be miserable.” He believes these ideas have influenced present-day Russian society, that the general population’s disengagement from politics is partly inculcated by the church’s emphasis on submission and obedience.

“We tried to present religion as a game you can play,” says Svetlow. So the bleak monochrome of Indika’s world is broken up by gleaming, pixelated golden points that reward holy deeds. A score in the corner counts your points, but the more you get, the more you need. An equivalence is suggested between the existential meaninglessness of earning points in a game and that of earning your way into heaven via prayer and self-abnegation.

The game impresses on a purely visual level. In this fallen world, everything is ruined. You traverse blighted villages, exploded factories and perilous scaffolding: twisted environments that reflect Indika’s inner turmoil. There is a vivid cinematic sensibility, with avant-garde flourishes such as fish-eye lens shots and claustrophobic camera angles (Svetlow namechecks film directors Terry Gilliam and Andrei Tarkovsky as influences). Meanwhile, flashback sequences of Indika’s youth play out in retro pixel-art graphics, with nostalgic references to the gameplay of classics such as Pac-Man and Frogger.

In recent months, the games industry has been shaken by lay-offs and studio closures. So it’s encouraging to see a product of such intellectual ambition and stylistic daring, especially one from a part of the world whose stories are not often told in the medium. Indika might have you losing your religion, but it certainly helps keep the faith alive.

‘Indika’ is available on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S