Indian gods, mythology and culture celebrated in video game Raji: An Ancient Epic
- Action-adventure title Raji: An Ancient Epic is narrated by the deities Durga and Vishnu and features gods and demons in art throughout
- Currently available for the Nintendo Switch, it is coming to the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in October
I played an hour of Raji: An Ancient Epic before I stopped and restarted. While it’s not uncommon for players to reboot a game after learning its basic controls, that wasn’t what made me want to begin again. This offering from Nodding Heads Games, a developer based in the Indian city of Pune, reminded me of a sensation I hadn’t thought about much during the pandemic: the feeling of exploring ad discovering a new place.
A game that could be completed in a weekend stretched into a full week as I began writing down the names of deities such as Mahishasura and Kali for further research.
On the surface, Raji: An Ancient Epic is an action-adventure game. Its tale of a young woman rescuing her brother from forces of the underworld can be told with many backdrops across numerous cultures.
But the game, a labour of love that was often a struggle to get made by its small team, has a rather specific design intent. Beyond asking players to tackle its demon-like monsters with acrobatic fight moves, the game seeks to highlight a place – ancient India – and the culture it birthed.
“From the very beginning we wanted to do a game that represents Hindu culture. We didn’t see any game that was made from India that had that,” says Shruti Ghosh, co-founder of Nodding Heads Games, whose founders had jobs at the Indian outposts of major game studios before going independent in 2017.
“We had not seen a game made with this mythology. So we just went for it.”