The Indian culture and its history are one of the oldest and less known to the world. The culture, civilizations, history is said to be the one from the evolution. Raji An Ancient Epic is one of the games that shows the reach of Indian Culture and History. You might have heard about this game if you didn’t you are really missing a lot. The story behind Raji An Ancient Epic is quite inspiring and everyone should know.
In India, access for PCs and consoles is limited. Now it’s growing slowly and access is getting easier for more people. But mostly, the gaming is circled around mobile devices. I remember two games which were Japanese that included Hindu Mythology. Other games were developed in India but none had a global release.
India having such massive history and Hindu Civilzation but very less known to the world and even the Indians itself. The Nodding Heads the studio who developed the Raji An Ancient Epic. They faced lots of challenges even they were about to bankrupt and one of the team member Srushti Ghosh sold her flat to get the money for this project.
// Collected the information from different sources
The Nodding Head Studios Start
The story behind Raji starts, Avichal Singh with Srusthi Ghosh and Ian Moude founded the Nodding head studios. Avichal Singh with the idea of bringing the Indian Culture and history in the game was the first spark in the Raji An Ancient Epic Journey. With the aim of putting India on stage game development their journey started. After they failed at Kickstarter the whole project was about to get abandoned. Shruti Ghosh says, after the failure, the project was sustaining on the savings of Avichal and Ian and herself.
The extreme point came up when Srushti had to sell her flat to sustain this project. Later they started hunting for Publishers and get some investment and financial help for the game. The team decided if any other investment doesn’t come in the next months we will quit the projects. Raji the game is inspired by the Rajsthan (An Indian State with hell lots of forts and historical places), which made the name of the game short ‘Raji”.
The Perks Of Being The First
In India where there’s limited access to PC games and consoles, game development is still a different thing. Nodding Heads team was the first Indian Team that was trying to make a game for XBOX, Nintendo, Playstation, and PCs. Primarily the Indian Gaming market is crowded with mobile devices. So you can assume that the people from this sector in India trust more in outsourcing. No one can trust easily on the newbie team to complete the project. Srushti Said in an interview with the Mako Reactor,
Usually, the [Indian game development] market is known for mobile and people trust the market more for outsourcing. So they don’t really trust a new team, that too from India to come out with something like this. They really liked the quality, but also but they were quite taken aback wondering if ‘they can make a full game?’. And that was quite a struggle that we faced initially with all the publishers that we were talking to. Everybody likes the demo, but they just couldn’t trust us to finish or just deliver a full game by the end of the year.
Srushti Ghosh
Most of the publishers avoided the project leaving no option for the Nodding Heads team. Later a ray of hope and kind of savior came in the name of Epic games. Srushti Ghosh received a message, to develop the Raji game on Unreal Engine 4 which had really good outputs. The studio won the Unreal Dev Grant which had prize of $5000 to $50000. This moment came in their life like a savior moment.
Team Picture (Raji facebook Pages) 
The team at Nasscom 2017, L to R: Paras, Avichal, Shruti, Ian and Anirudh
The team said if Epic games haven’t been involved the project could have been closed by now. All the team members were at their last few rupees and they were already looking for jobs. So you can imagine the situation was about to break. The prize money received from the dev grant they used to continue their project which helped the project to continue for while.
The Next Step
After reaching out every other investor and rejections Super.com signed up Nodding head games. Super.com signed up Nodding heads months after they won the Dev Grant. The Super was little bit odd for the game they were developing. But Srushti Ghosh said, they never intereferred in anything we have been working on. They put the trust in the team and didn’t pulled out the deal at last moment like most of the other investors.
Next thing was to get the dev kits. They did lots of hassle to bring out the dev kits of Sony, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. Linus Tzelos sound designer of the game is from Greece they shipped the kits to him and then brought them to India with him. Also, they got good support from Nvidia to test the game on their RTX video cards.
Jalay Technical Artist and Dipam Programmer were working on making the Raji playable on consoles. They were testing it out first on Nintendo Switch. Because it has lower specifications and if this one can run it well others shouldn’t have any problems. You can see the paintings and some artwork in the game it is handmade by Srusti Ghosh.
The Response
The team released the Demo on Steam and they have fully released the game on the Nintendo Platform. They sure got the lots of positive reviews coming from the struggle to releasing the newest and finest Indian Culture game. The team was communicating directly with the gamers who tried the game to know What they liked and what they didn’t.
Iam Maude said, they benefited from the players feedback in various aspects. The User Interface and combat actions were mostly improved after they received the feedback.
In-Game Story
A sibling story where the plot snakes back and forth like a striking Cobra… the game’s attention focuses on the relationship between Raji and Golu. Where we witness their growth, their bond, and struggles whilst they navigate the perils of this timeless universe. Essentially, this is a journey all about discovery.
Raji – An Ancient Epic is an intense action-adventure set in ancient India. Raji – An Ancient Epic takes you through an intense and emotional story of Raji, who is determined to find her brother and bring peace to the human realm. The story of Raji – An Ancient Epic is a witness of how Raji evolves through the atrocities of war and facing the loss of loved ones.
She takes it upon herself to find an end to these unyielding battles through which the wars rage. This can only happen if she manages to break down the might and the stratagem devised by the great Asura Lord, Mahabalasura.
The Importance And Impact
The Story behind Raji An Ancient Epic is not only important for the Raji team but it will act as fuel to ignite the other developers and try game developments in India. Mostly in India, game development and its carrier is still a Taboo. This country has so much potential and so much history which can be shown to the world in a new and in an interesting way.
Mostly, Indian gaming development is saturated for Mobile gaming only. It will be great to see the AAA titles that will be made in India with Indian Culture and history. Recently, Ubisoft Pune team handled the lead role in the Prince Of Persia title. These incidents will definitely make a revolution in the Indian gaming sector and the Raji became one of them.
Raji An Ancient Epic will be available on Steam on 15th October 2020. You can wishlist the game on Steam Page. Personally I am looking forward to playing this game as soon as I can. Already played the demo available on the steam, I was really impressed mostly with the environments and arts.
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