Indika publisher 11 bit studios has announced that it is donating $50,000 of revenue generated by the game to support Ukrainian children, in the wake of a Russian missile attack which struck Kyiv's Ohmatdyt Children's Hospital earlier this week.
A Polish publisher and developer behind games like Frostpunk, This War of Mine, and The Alters, 11 bit announced via Instagram that "The recent abhorrent attack on the children's hospital in Kyiv by Russian military forces shook us to our core."
Having previously announced that it would donate a portion of the revenue generated by Indika to children affected by the war in Ukraine, the studio "knew the time to act was now." $50,000 will go to the Liberty Ukraine Foundation "to support Ukrainian kids receiving treatment at Ohmatdyt."
Indika is a surreal third-person adventure game from the devs at Odd Meter, a Russian studio which left the country for Kazakhstan in protest during the invasion of Ukraine, with founder Dmitry Svetlow branding the war an "insane crime" carried out to "satisfy the ambitions of an elderly, weak-minded dwarf."
In an interview with PCG last year, Svetlow told me that the game itself—a tale of an Orthodox nun on a journey through an alt-history Russia—was the studio's attempt to "to show that people and authorities are not the same thing."
Ohmatdyt, which refers to itself as "the biggest children's hospital in Ukraine," took a direct hit from a Russian missile last Monday, killing two adults. The attack was part of a wider missile barrage launched across Ukraine that killed at least 43 people.
Though the Russian government denied launching the attack on the hospital—attributing the explosion without evidence to a "Ukrainian air defence missile"—investigation has shown the weapon used to be a Russian Kh-101 missile, and the attack has drawn international condemnation of Russia.
"War devastates everything in its path," reads 11 bit's statement, "and is most cruel to those that are most innocent—children. Let this message resonate with us all—players and developers together—and let's do everything we can."
