If You Claim To Want Shorter Games With Worse Graphics, Don't Overlook Indika

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tessa Kaur

Published Jun 3, 2024

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In 2020, game developer, podcaster and former user , “i want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and i'm not kidding” [sic]. This tweet has done the rounds multiple times over the last four years, becoming a meme in its own right – it and can♔ often be found in memes where different characters recline and say it, for some r𝓡eason.

The tweet echoes a sentiment that has only become more relevant as the years pass – many people would rather have games that are smaller in scope, aren’t focused on photorealism, and are made by fewer people who have rights in their workplace. The triple-A industry has only grown more focused on games that are bigger, more expensive to make and buy, and made by corporations unbothered by the idea of overworking its employ🐓ees to reach unreasonable deadlines. And because of the state of the industry, with even big studios having been ravaged by waves of layoffs🅠 in recent years, it’s harder to find funding to make smaller games.

Unfortunately, there is no wဣay to identify for sure if a studio actually is anti-crunc🅰h and paying its developers fairly without those developers coming out and saying so themselves, but if you personally want to support games with smaller scopes and ‘worse’ graphics, there’s no better way to do it than by buying indies and double-A games. I spent some time playing over the weekend, and it strikes me as fulfilling this exactly.

You Should Play Weirder Games

Smaller games are where you’re going to find the really bizarre stuff, because triple-A developers generally aren’t willing to strike out and make things that aren’t conventional open world games with long campaigns that require a ton of time investment. Big corporations are risk-averse, it comes with the shareholders. I’ve always made it a point✤ to try out games that distinguish themselves from the crowd by being, well, weird.

Indika is, by all accounts, very weird. You play Indika, a young Orthodox Christiaꩲn 🍷nun in 19th century Russia, who has a devilish voice in her head that questions all the things she’s supposed to believe and gives her strange visions. Story-driven and visually gorgeous, this third-person game dabbles with platforming and chase sequences while constantly posing pointed questions about the nature of morality, personal agency, and the human soul.

The game is extremely narrative-heavy, but 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:as my colleag🌞ue Ben Sledge has written, it also leans into the best pa🌃rt🅺s of being a video game.

It’s a reflection of developer , and the formerly🎉 Moscow-based studio moved to Kazakhstan in the opening months of the invasion of Ukraine. Many members have taken part in street protests against the government and gotten in trouble with Russian authorities. All this to say: this is not the kind of game you’d likely find in the triple-A space.

Yes, Indika Is Beautiful And Still Has Worse Graphics

I am not saying that Indika doesn’t have stunning visual fidelity, because it does. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the rendering of faces and environments parallels t♎he conventional triple-A – just look at the trailer. Even on m🔜y , I am constantly in awe of just how visually compelling the game is, with its almost photorealistic snow-covered settings and character renderings. But while the graphics are gorgeous, it’s far from indistinguishable from camera footage which the larger industry inexplicably craves, and the game has plenty of jank. The lip sync is often weird, and characters regularly clip through objects.

But it’s this jank that assures me it’s not trying to be perfect. When a team of this size is involved in creating a game with this kind of visual fidelity, I feel almost comforted when I see that it isn’t perfect – certain things have to be depriorit꧂ised in order for🍸 other things to work smoothly, and I tend to feel that the first thing to be sacrificed should be visual perfection.

Instead of focusing on character models moving perfectly at all times, Indika uses cinematic techniques to create immersion and moments of stunning beauty. This game is not cinematic in the way that, for example, God of War or The Last of Us are cinematic. Those triple-As are ofte🌼n called cinematic because of their long runtimes and the way cutscenes and even boss fights are filmed through ways that make them look like a mainstream movie.

Indika, instead, follows in the tradition of more surrealist filmmakers who play with horror – I can’t help but think of Ari Aster and Yorgos Lanthimos as I pl🌜ay it. I🅘t’s not a scary game, but it can feel unsettling in parts, and it uses fisheye lenses, surprising camera angles, and quick cuts to great effect. Where The Last of Us feels like HBO, Indika’s visual style is more reminiscent of a much more monochromatic Poor Things.

The game relies on visual interest instead of ✱visual perfection, and that’s something you should be looking out for in games🍬 like this.

Indika Tops Out At Five Hours

Here’s the best part – it’s short, fulfilling ⛦the first part of the meme. Shorter games take less money and time to make, which not only means cheaper games with just as much impact, but that developers can make experimental games, with more frequency, and without quite as much risk. I’ve been dipping in and out of Indika for a while, often skipping over it in favour of games like because I’m in the mood for something I can listen to a podcast while playing, but I got sucked into it till far past my bedtime last night and got through quite a bit of it.

Is it mostly a walking simulator? Sure, which makes its short runtime a good th꧟ing. But also, not really? I don’t want to spoil anything, but Indika packs multiple visual style🎃s and modes of gameplay into quite a compact package, making it experimental beyond its content, themes, and camera angles. It respects your time, without ever giving up its commitment to subverting player expectation, and the ways in which it plays with different kinds of gameplay and visuals makes the game never feel static for too long.

The point is: please play Indika. And while you’re looking for shorter games with worse graphics, try , , and . 2024’s indies have been excellent so far, and you should give their developers your cold, hard cash if you want mor🌄e games like those.