Russian nun simulator Indika, my most anticipated game this year, breaks out the dancing PVC fetish men to announce its May release date

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Call me solipsistic, but I'm still not convinced Indika isn't a game someone made specifically for me. The tale of an Orthodox nun on a journey to the centre of the spirit through an alternate 19th-century Russia, it pulls on everything from Mikhail Bulgakov to 8-bit arcade games to create something that felt entirely singular when I tried its demo earlier this year. Now we know when the full thing is due, courtesy of the Future Games Show Spring Showcase.

Indika is set to release on May 8 this year on Steam, GOG, and Epic, and honestly I can't wait. The game quickly became my most-anticipated release of 2024 after I tried out the demo, and got me sufficiently excited to make a TikTok. Do you know how into a thing I have to be to go TikTok about it? I didn't even think it was possible.

Anyway, to mark the announcement of its release date, Odd Meter's concocted another completely baffling trailer to wet your liturgical whistle. This one kicks off with Indika and her companion/captor Ilya (who looks suspiciously similar to Alexander Kaidonovsky's character in Stalker) taking a bite of an apple off a slightly rotund tree of knowledge. Then the chiptunes kick in and the fellas in PVC fetish suits—at least that's what they remind me of—start dancing. Pretty normal stuff. I think they did that for one of the Gears of War games.

There is some relatively sober trailer material in there, too, mind you, possibly at the insistence of Indika's publisher, and the game sure does look pretty. Its strange fantasy Motherland looks great, filled with winding, endless landscapes that seem at once familiarly Russian and distinctly alien.

So consider me first-in-line to check Indika out when it finally hits. Whatever you think about the game, you can't deny it's going for it. There are a lot of creative risks happening, and they might all fail to come together when Odd Meter puts out the full thing in May, but goddammit, I have to see for myself when it comes out.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.