I’m going to talk about the end of Indika, a surreal indie game from Russian developer Odd Meter about a nun who leaves her cloister on an errand which turns into a psychedelic adventure in search of a miracle. It’s an interesting game, and it only takes about 4 hours to complete, so if you haven’t checked it out and you feel even an inkling of interest, I encourage you to stop reading this and go play it. Full spoilers begin now.
Indika(the character, not the game) is a young nun living in a remote convent who is… not exactly popular with the sisters. She is regularly treated as burdensome, a nuisance, and it is quickly revealed that this is because Indika harbors a dark connection to what she (and likely others) believes is the Devil himself, resulting in strange visions that blur her sense of reality and cause her to act in ways that are disturbing to others. As the player controlling her and experiencing the world from her perspective, you hear the voice of the Devil speaking to you directly, and speaking to Indika, taunting her with the language of anxiety, pulling on her fears and insecurities at every opportunity. He mocks her, tells her that the sisters have nothing but contempt for her, and whittles away at the foundations of her faith with questions of logic and philosophy.
There are even segments throughout where reality fractures and turn a hellish red. His voice becomes louder than all other sounds, drowning Indika in his laughter, his mockery, all on a loop which plays over and over until she can at last silence him through prayer and perseverance. She clings to faith, even as he breaks her platitudes and scripture apart with nothing shy of glee.
Along the way, Indika encounters a man named Ilya, an escaped convict with a diseased arm that is at risk of killing him via sepsis. He tells her that he has heard messages from God since the arm became infected, telling him to go to the town of Spasov where a relic of the church called the Kudets is being shown to the faithful so they may pray at it and ask for miracles of their own. The voice of God, which the player does not hear, insists that he must not treat his injury, that only the Kudets will heal him. Ilya is a believer, and Indika takes a liking to him. He’s honest, upfront, and relentlessly dedicated to his quest.
However, as their time together continues, Indika does not revel in their shared faith. Quite the opposite, in fact. She shares with him some of the ideas the voice in her head has spoken to her, sometimes in the form of questions and others as direct statements. It’s clear that she is searching for some kind of exchange, some kind of reassurance from Ilya, yet he offers very little, remaining focused on the immediate dangers they’re facing and the task he’s been given by God.
During a quiet moment following a rather harrowing trek through a fish cannery, Ilya falls unconscious. Indika, with some medical education, believes that the arm will kill him unless it is removed at once. Unable to watch him die, and in direct contrast with his wishes, with the supposed word of God, she amputates.
Ilya awakens and is horrified at what she has done. He chastises her, and seems not only outraged but deeply sorrowful, feeling like his journey has been for nothing, that he has betrayed God. The normally talkative man becomes quiet, resigned. Yet, this game’s surreal elements remain at the forefront.
His severed arm, which he has slung across his back in the sling which had held it steady all this time, is still moving. It points, it gestures, it closes into a fist. And despite believing he has disobeyed the word of God, Ilya persists. He chases the Kudets still. In spite of everything, he still wants a miracle.
Indika’s final sequence feels truly cinematic. Following a dramatic few scenes where they beg the local priest of Spasov to let them behold the Kudets, only for Ilya and Indika to be accosted by the authorities on account of his being, you know, an escaped convict, the priest is shot in the ensuing chaos and Indika is held responsible while Ilya manages to escape.
While in prison, the devil’s voice haunts Indika, and an offer is made. Not the kind of Faustian contract one might expect, not even really any kind of exchange. He simply instructs her to let him help her escape. The specific means are obscured, but Indika overpowers the guard and escapes the prison to go in search of Ilya.
Abruptly, the perspective changes. The whole game, we’ve been playing from a third person point-of-view, but without warning we are brought inside Indika’s head in a physical sense, changing to a first person viewpoint as she walks the muddy streets of Spasov and finds Ilya outside a cramped pawn shop. He is drunk. He stole and pawned the Kudets for a measly sum which he traded for an instrument he plays with the expected low skill level. His quest was fulfilled and abandoned in almost the same moment. No miracle saved his arm or his life. He’s a drunk, wasting his freedom and now in greater trouble than ever.
Was it spiritual guidance which led him to the Spasov? Or was it just a physical impulse? Something purely internal? The arm being somewhat alive shows us that there might not be a difference. Even when cut from the body, when it becomes an external object, little about the arm changes. The force outside of him and the drive within were always the same.
Indika enters the pawn shop, asking for the Kudets, a request the pawnbroker quickly denies. Ilya reenters and causes a commotion, outraged over the instrument he was sold, insisting he was scammed. In the confusion, Ilya grabs the Kudets and…
And nothing. Nothing happens. What did she think would happen? Did she even have an idea? The faintest imagining? Was this to be the ascendant moment for her faith? Where all doubts were dashed away and God would reveal himself to her, fully and beyond questioning? Would the voice inside at last be silenced?
Indika opens the relic and finds that it is empty. She falls to the floor, her prayer beads shattering as they slip from her grasp. Looking up, she is face-to-face with a mirror, but the only thing staring back at her is the demon. The one that has been with her all along.
Its voice takes over, another one of its lectures on faith and morality while she tries to argue in vain. She slips away from reality, into an abstract space where she is literally and emotionally spiraling downward, lost.
And we are returned to the beginning of the game, to the strange mini-game with the falling woman. Because the adventure didn’t change anything for Indika.
She’s always had this doubt, this demon inside. From the start it was an internal force, an entity within her being, part and parcel.
Indika suggests that, bleak as it may be, perhaps there is no God to count on for miracles, and no Devil to torment you into sin. Maybe God and the Devil aren’t even different. Maybe there’s just us.
Vulpes Valentine's Video Game Valley 