Indivisible

Review

In the beautiful village of Ashwat, a sixteen-year old girl known as Ajna, daughter of the village leader, lives a happy and cheerful life within the community. Her father, who was an excellent soldier in his youth, wants to make sure his young daughter becomes the best fighter in the land, and therefore enforces a strict regime every single day. Every morning, Ajna must attend a martial arts training session with her father. But one day she arrived late, which displeased her father, Indr.  Well, we all know how a sixteen year-old teenager can react, and yes, an argument took place, and Indr made his way swiftly back to the village. Feeling sad and annoyed with herself, Ajna ran after her Dad to apologise. But when she arrived at the outskirts of Ashwat, the village was on fire, and all the villagers, including her beloved father, were dead, having been killed by the army of Lord Ravannavar! Furious, she promises herself to find Lord Ravannavar and take revenge for the death of her father.

Indivisible is an action/RPG platformer game developed by Lab Zero Games and published by 505 Games on Steam on the 9 of October 2019.  This game is also available on PS4, as well as on Xbox One. The Switch version has not been released at the time of writing this review, but should be available later on this month (October 2019).

After fighting your father’s killer, Ajna decides not to return him the favour by killing him, but instead forces him to lead her to Lord Ravannavar, his boss. Right there comes the first funny thing in this game; Ajna can absorb people into her head. Not everybody, only people who join her in this adventure. In total, she’ll absorbed 22 characters along her journey. Can you imagine having 22 voices popping out of your head during a conversation? You’d be a bit edgy, wouldn’t you? But Ajna is a natural, and can even travel into her own head (her Inner Realm) to talk to each of these individuals and upgrade her offensive and defence fighting techniques. But to improve her fighting skill, she must find Ringsels, which are red stones laid out in the levels and usually not easy to reach.

As Ajna welcomes new guests inside her head, you will be given a short description of the guest’s attacks. You can select right there to use this new character in your party (4 in total) or at any given time.

The levels are very well-structured, and Ajna will find herself going up, down, left and right non-stop! Be careful to avoid spikes on walls, ceilings and on the floor as it will dramatically decrease Ajna’s health each time she touches them. She’ll be talking to new people, of whom some will find a new home in her brain, along with others who will give her information as part of the story. Within each level, there are small structures with a bells hanging in the middle, similar to the ones you find in some monasteries. When she reaches one of them, she can meditate and save her journey. As she progresses through her quest, she’ll acquire new items, such as an axe, a bow with an explosive arrow and a spear. With the axe, she will be able to smash wooden obstacles to access new rooms, or use the explosive arrows to break rocks into pieces that block entrances to other rooms or areas. The spear she’ll be able to use as a pole vault to reach higher grounds. All these items will help her to fight enemies within each level (if she doesn’t touch them; if she does, it will activate the combat phase) to inflict as much damage as possible before entering the combat phase.

She’ll find enemies in each stage, and they will be tougher ones each time she reaches a new location.  Before entering the combat phase, she will be able to use her bow and arrow to damage some enemies as they come towards her.  Later in the game, she will also have access to a spear. Bear in mind that some enemies will not receive any damage if she only uses the bow and arrow.  In these cases, she’ll need to get close to the opponent before the opponent gets up, and hit it hard to activate the combat phase.

I really like the real-time combat phase. Here, Ajna and three other characters will engage with one or more enemies. The exciting thing is that as a player, you never know how many opponents you will face before you’re actually in the combat phase.

Each of your characters will have three small spheres underneath them, which represent their attacks. Each time you use one or all of them rapidly, it will take a few seconds to regenerate each of the spheres before you can re-attack the foe(s). Each successful attack will increase a power bar located on the top left of your screen, and when it is full, you can use it to activate a special move with one of your four characters. However, the opponent(s) will fight back. Some will attack the entire party and other’s will attack specific characters. At the moment, you need to block their strikes. If you don’t, not only will your character’s health decrease, but the power bar will reduce.  The trick is to manage to keep having your characters’ spheres full and continue striking your enemies all the time to inflict more and more damage. At the end of the combat, you’ll receive experience points, and your characters might level up.  

What a game, let me tell you! I found myself absolutely absorbed right from the start. I have been playing Indivisible for the past 14 hours and successfully completed 7 levels so far. I’ve really enjoyed the story so far, along with each of the characters that I have found during my gameplay.

The hand-drawn artwork and animations are top-notch, and the game runs smoothly — splendid narrative, both voice and written, with lots of humour.  There are plenty of settings available for this game, and it has been translated into 10 languages so far. You can use your keyboard or gamepad to play Indivisible (for me, gamepad is the way to go for PC player). Very hard to find a negative for this game.