The IGF (Independent Games Festival) aims to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize independent game developers advancing the medium. This year, Game Developer sat down with the finalists for the IGF’s Nuovo and Grand Prize nominees ahead of GDC to explore the themes, design decisions, and tools behind each entry. Game Developer and GDC are sibling organizations under Informa.
INDIKA takes the player on a journey of religious self-discovery alongside the title character of the same name. Oh, and the devil is along for the ride as well.
Game Developer had a chat with Dmitry Svetlov, writer and director of the multi-award nominated title, to discuss how telling this story as a game was important for its exploration of religion and its effect on our lives, using the character’s mental state as a means of creating complexities and puzzles within the game’s environments, and what appealed to them about adding faith points into the game when they serve no actual in-game purpose.
Who are you, and what was your role in developing INDIKA?
I’m Dmitry Svetlov. I’m the founder of Odd Meter studio and the writer and director of INDIKA.
What’s your background in making games?
I started making my first games in school using BASIC, then spent a long time working on an unreleased indie game. In 2018, the studio’s first game Sacralith: The Archer’s Tale was released, where I worked as a programmer, game designer, and wore many other hats. And now, the latest—INDIKA.
How did you come up with the concept for INDIKA?
The first details of the story appeared in my head many years before development began.
What development tools were used to build your game?
The game was developed in UE4. We used mocap (including facial). Nothing particularly special.
INDIKA is an exploration of religion’s effect on the self and an examination of faith. What drew you to explore these subjects in a video game?
For me, INDIKA is first and foremost a story about humanity’s eternal struggle with itself, and religion is the perfect companion for this theme. Because it’s specifically in religious, mystical, “objective” reality where the fight against “evil” very quickly displaces the original aspiration toward “good.” And yes, this topic has always been very interesting and close to me, as I spent a lot of time in church as a teenager and visited women’s monasteries with my mother multiple times.
How did the form and possibilities of the video game format enhance the themes you wanted to explore with this game?
In INDIKA, the theme of “Game” itself resonates quite strongly. The Game became a very important metaphor for our story. The game we all play, according to rules we didn’t make up, waiting for the reward that’s destined for us in case of “victory,” and living in fear of punishment in case of “defeat.”
What challenges did this format create in exploring these themes?
I would say this format actually provided many opportunities not available to other art forms like film or books. Though, to be honest, we’re still at the beginning of our journey in mastering these possibilities.
INDIKA weaves puzzles throughout its world as physical manifestations of crises of faith. What thoughts went into creating puzzle elements and interactions that fit with the game’s themes? How did you create new interactions for the player while keeping your themes firmly in mind?
We tried to make the gameplay moments reflect the protagonist’s state whenever possible so that the world would literally tear apart when Indika’s inner world is ready to break into pieces. So that the world would become physically confusing and deadlocked when Indika loses understanding of what’s happening. So that the characters would literally destroy the world around them on their path to their goal, and so on.
The game features a striking, realistic style in most places, but its past events reflect the pixel art style of older video games. What drew you to have both styles represented in this game? Why have the protagonist’s past represented with a pixel art style? And how did you decide what to do for the mini-games?
You’ve probably noticed that contrasts are the foundation of INDIKA‘s aesthetics. Therefore, we wanted the protagonist’s dark and gray present to look even more dreary in contrast with her bright and joyful childhood with a time when life seemed and was a fun game. As for the gameplay, we chose the type that best suited the story being told. There’s no particular depth to it.
The game features a faith point system that the game overtly tells the player is largely pointless. What drew you to add this element to the game (and its accompanying skill tree), and why did you make sure to go out of your way to tell the player it was all for nothing? Why was this system important to add when it’s (technically) of no importance at all?
As I mentioned before, the idea of showing human perception through the lens of a game became one of our cornerstones. And although technically it doesn’t change anything, all players continue to collect these points, including the developers. I think it can be viewed as a small social experiment.
How did you decide how to represent the devil throughout the game? What drew you to largely show the devil through shadow and voice?
On one hand, the devil is Indika herself—that “bad” part of her that she dreams of getting rid of. On the other hand, it’s us—the force that’s always behind our shoulder. And even more simply—it’s the voice that forever whispers things we would never dare to say out loud.
You have mentioned in an interview with The Guardian that your own experience with religion is deeply tied to the creation of INDIKA. How did creating this scathing look at religion and its effects affect you? What did it feel like to create an experience like this—to tell this story? How did it feel to be mired in Indika’s thoughts and questions throughout the course of development? How does it feel to have examined and told them to their conclusion now?
What was it like? Honestly—the best experience of my life. In general, doing something that moves you most in life is a luxury that few can afford, and I never cease to be grateful to life that I, and our incredible team, had such an opportunity.
What do you hope players take away from this game?
I would like players not to take something away, but rather, for the game to take away a small piece from at least someone. After all, we so often look for simple answers in art and so often remain dissatisfied when we’re left alone with uncomfortable unanswered questions. But isn’t that the best thing that any experience can give us?
