‘Raji: An Ancient Epic’ from Indian gaming studio Nodding Heads Game, surprisingly launched on Switch

Nintendo released a new Indie World video showcasing a wide variety of indie games coming to the Nintendo Switch system this year and next year and Raji: An Ancient Epic from Indian studio Nodding Heads Game is one of them.

On the official microblogging page, Raji: An Ancient Epic team shared their gratitude upon being launched on Switch.

Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of publisher and developer relations Steve Singer shared in the official blog post that indie games inspired library on Nintendo switch is aiming to expand. 

“Thanks to the independent developers from around the world who have found their home on Nintendo Switch, the system continues to be a place where fans can enjoy an expanding and diverse library of indie games anytime and anywhere,” Singer added.

Raji: An Ancient Epic is an action-adventure game set in ancient India. A young girl named Raji has been chosen by the gods to stand against the demonic invasion of the human realm.The game is inspired by Indian mythologies such as Mahabharata and Ramayana, and by the medieval architecture of Rajasthan.Every corner of the game’s environment is drawn in the Pahari art style and combines hand-painted textures, rendered in 3D giving the Raji: An Ancient Epic a stunning and unique visual quality in game.

Earlier in June 2020, the game was selected among the 900 games who showcased at the Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition. Prior that in March 2020 it was among the 40 shortlisted games who have showcased their games at the Spring Edition of the Steam Game Festival. The game was also shortlisted earlier to showcase at the GDC Indie Megabooth but due to the pandemic outbreak of COVID 19 it has led the cancellation of the event.

The game went live for a Kickstarter campaign in 2017, however it did not receive good enough response. The creators continued developing the game at a steady pace and have been sharing updates through their social media handle.

In a conversation with Animationxpress in December 2019 Ian Maude, Shruti Ghosh and Avichal Singh shared that “Raji has been travelling the globe thanks to the folks over at ID@Xbox and The MIX. Both Paras and Ian represented the studio at back to back events in Seattle earlier this year. Where we were invited to showcase Raji at Microsoft’s Open House and at The MIX event back in August.”

Also, they have expressed earlier that in 2019 they could not attend many events because of their busy development schedule. However Raji was showcased at many events, one in particular, Dev Play 2019 in Bucharest, where it bagged three of the four awards title- Best Game Design, Best Visuals, and Best Game of the Show.

Raji is also available in the Steam game wishlist with the mentioned release date of Q3 2020.