Raji: An Ancient Epic – The story behind the ‘Made in India’ game most are expecting
Founders narrate the struggle behind creating an Indian game for a worldwide audience
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Raji is that the protagonist of the sport inspired from Indian mythology (Source: Nodding Games)
Raji: An Ancient Epic has been causing ripples across the planet for its stunning visuals, use of Indian mythology, and an excellent storyline. The console-worthy game from India was delayed for a few of years thanks to the shortage of funds making it a bumpy ride for founders Shruti Ghosh, Avichal Singh, and Ian Maude. Indianexpress.com spoke to the three founders about their journey of making the sport , which has been released earlier in the week on Nintendo Switch and is about to launch on PC and consoles soon.
How Raji began
“It feels great. Finally, after three years of struggle, we are getting to get the sport out,” Ghosh heaves a sigh of relief as she lists every excruciating detail in their long journey to urge the sport out. “In the initial years once we tried to try to to a Kickstarter campaign, we couldn’t reach the goal. That was the sole plan we had some time past .
We made a demo for 10 months,” she remembers, adding that the team was just five of them… “sustaining ourselves with our savings”.
The three founders bootstrapped the project with their savings, hoping funds will pour in from Kickstarter. “We didn’t have the budget to urge a PR company to try to to marketing for us within the initial first few days of the campaign. That’s something we learned. We were struggling to seek out a publisher to fund us,” Ghosh adds about what she says was a “difficult time for the whole team”.
Ghosh, a specialist in hand painting, has game developer experience with blow out Open World & Dominator and VC Arts – Fantastic Four also as Bejeweled Blitz, Monopoly Slots and Tetris Blitz.
Despite the feedback of the game’s demo being positive, the Nodding Games founders had to toil hard to finally get a publisher.
“Every day, we were sending emails. We were getting specialized feedback from publishers but somehow the answers were ‘at this point they won’t fund us’. it had been disheartening but we had to stay trying,” she says.
Despite securing an Unreal Dev Grants, a $5 million fund supporting developers working with Unreal Engine 4, Ghosh had to sell her apartment to sustain the team till they found a publisher. “After much struggle, we struck a affect super.com. They believed in our dream and gave us the liberty to form the sport the way we wanted to.”
So, what motivated the team all this while? “Whenever we wont to talk about our aim as a studio, it had been always to place India on the sport developer map. We wanted to form a console game that was of international quality and that we thought that no-one delved into the Indian mythology and made a game that represented something. That’s how Raji started off.”
Elements of the sport , the inspiration behind it
From what’s visible of the trailers, many parallels are often drawn with other games within the hack and slash genre. Singh, one among the founders and game designer, lists his inspirations: “Bastion, Journey, Transistor, and when it involves gameplay God of War, Prince of Persia, Hyper Light Drifter, Devil May Cry… all of those games inspired us.”
Raji is getting tons of appreciation for representing the normal Indian artwork on the walls and sculptures because the story progresses and mood changes. Ghosh acknowledges that tons of this comes from her experiences travelling to different parts of the country as a student.
“In college, I studied traditional painting styles. That has always been an idea for me… the craftsmanship of our artists is beyond beautiful and that i really wanted to represent something like that within the game as a tribute,” she explains. “If you check out the mythological stories of Durga and other gods within the game, they’re painted on the walls like within the palaces of Rajasthan.”
But this was anything but easy. “The 3D artwork was difficult given the quantity of your time we had. it had been a 14-month project that was cut-short from what we initially had.
We had to deliver the standard within the way we wanted to during a very short period of your time with alittle team which consists of an artist, me, Ian our character artist, David and our other 3D artist Shreya and our tech artist. We are quite experienced, especially Ian and me,” she added.
For Maude, every minute detail has its own significance within the game. “Basically, there’s a backstory for each element within the sport albeit it’s a rock, pebble etc. Especially when it involves character’s jewelry and the way it influences them.”
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Shruti explains further: “We took tons of inspiration from Indian and Balinese mythology. We thought that storytelling through puppets may be a great way to require the player faraway from combat and tell the story of Raji. Avi’s inputs were crucial during this . He would give us a thought of the character he needs and what quite enemies would be.
He would do the initial research and determine the type of description he wants.”
Expectations from the game’s feminist character
In the game, Raji sets bent save her brother on Raksha Bandhan Day and kill Mahabalsura. Usually, it’s the brother’s duty to save lots of his sister, but within the game, it’s the opposite way around.
Maude, who has worked for top gaming companies like Rockstar, Ubisoft, The Chinese Room and Acclaim, says the story wasn’t made keeping in mind that the feminine protagonist are going to be more appealing. “It wasn’t a conscious decision and it had been a sibling story anyway. It just felt right. It just looks like the proper thing to try to to .”
Shruti agrees but believes Indian mythology is what is going to intrigue the audience more because it’s still not been utilized in a game of this level. “I think at the top of the day if the story is convincing and players can hook up with the character itself then the gender doesn’t matter. There are games before us that have had a robust female protagonist, believable characters and other people like it ,” she says, adding that she doesn’t know whether Raji will attract more gamers or not.
Singh cites other games that feature female protagonists and are an enormous hit among gamers. “It has been done countless times within the past decade. Transistor, Hellblade, Horizon… there are numerous other games. People play the sport as long as there’s quality, something fresh. We are providing all those,” he said.
As stage director of The Chinese Room, Maude oversaw the Bafta Award-winning game “Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture”. Later on, he became a teacher in computer game art in Pune where he met the 2 co-founders.
Response from Indian gamers
Raji: An Ancient Epic is yet to release on PS4, Xbox One consoles and PCs but the anticipation is there, especially with some celebrities sharing visuals of the sport . “Indian gamers love the sport . Rapper Raftar shared the sport on his Instagram story and that we were invaded by his fans. People in India are just waiting because they need the sport on PC or PS4,” says Singh who joined Zynga after his studies and worked on Farmville and Empires and Allies.
The push for make in India also will help altogether probability. “Well, it’s made in India and it’s up to the people what they need to try to to with it. The core team is in Pune. Of course, the sport is 100 per cent inspired by Indian architecture, mythology and quite half the team is from India,” Singh adds, saying getting tagged on social media for ‘Made in India’ is sweet .
But the sport will have a worldwide outlook, and Singh has his reasons for that. “Raising funds for a game in India is that the most challenging thing. We all have worked in companies like Zynga, EA, Ubisoft but we had not made anything together.
the thought always was that this game is for the international audience and that’s why the standard bar was set really high.” they might check out language versions later if people demand it. For now, English version itself has been an uphill climb.
Singh almost dismissed any possibility of a sequel to the sport within the near future. “We are so occupied with Raji’s development thus far . We haven’t really put any thought to a sequel. we might sort of a break first because we’ve been working extremely hard for the last two years.
Even before there was such a lot financial stress we took… you would like financial stability too. i’m looking forward to an opportunity first then discuss what’s next,” he said.
