Raji: Prologue - First Impressions

One of my life long dreams has been to see my country, India, develop quality video games that live up to the high standards of its competitors in aspects of design, gameplay, storytelling, visuals, and sound. Raji: An Ancient Epic is a big step in that direction.

I had seen Raji’s trailer long back and the sheer quality of its visuals was enough to grab my interest. The gameplay itself seemed pretty decent but what excited me the most was its lore inspired from the Indian mythology. Sure, there must have been attempts of such a feat before but nothing that has shown up in the radar of so many people. Being a PC gamer, I have to wait for its Windows release which is right around the corner, 15th October. Meanwhile, Nodding Heads Games, the company behind this gem released a prologue of the game on Steam. So, this is going to be my first impression review/thoughts based on that demo.

The game starts with a cutout animation sequence explaining the premise of the whole game. The Demons are back to continue the war that was started ages ago by wreaking havoc on the humans. In this process, the Demons abduct Raji’s brother Golu. This sets the low-level goal of the game which is to get Golu back. To succeed in her quest, Raji seeks help from Goddess Durga which defines the high-level goal of the game - to win the war against demons. This efficient intro sets the tone of the game. 

The game starts with what seems like a gorgeous ruin consisting of caves and full of platforming sections. The environment emphasizes the scale and is reminiscent of the Indian culture through its murals, architecture, character design, weapon design, and puzzles. The prologue consists of two completely playable levels showcasing the rich and scenic world. This blends well with the wonderful and enchanting audio track of the game. It feels new and fresh and contributes to providing a unique experience.

The game has a good and varied level design, providing some basic platforming experiences, ample space and objects to move around and use different tactics during combat encounters. I couldn’t help but notice that some platforming, puzzles, and combat mechanics and sections of this game are almost identical to one of my favourite game series, Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia. The pillar holds, wall runs, wall run flip and strike, rotate strike around a pillar, and more. Now, other games use this too but the look and feel of a few of these were too similar which makes it easy to include others as a complete package by association. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It was easy and familiar to grasp these concepts again and it brought a nostalgic smile on my face.

Raji has a pretty typical albeit an awkward combat system. It reminded me of one of the comments I got in my school game project, “If mouse input is not needed then don’t ask for its use even in the menu, otherwise the player will keep holding on to it”. In Raji, the mouse is a big cursor which is initially out of the screen and does nothing unless you’re encountering enemies. It then acts as a targeting tool. It took me some time to understand why I could not hit the enemy even if I was facing them. Turns out my cursor needs to face them as well. 

The in-game voiceovers seemed to be quite good, which is not very easily seen in games. However, the voices of the cutscenes seemed to lack the same intensity and performance.

Lately, I’ve been researching multiple-purpose design approaches in video games and one of the things I found fascinating is how many games use unintuitive context-sensitive buttons. Raji is not immune to this. One clear example of this was - press E to fall down a ledge. You use E to interact with objects or finish off enemies in the game but when it asked me to use it to drop down a ledge, my kneejerk reaction was, “This is weird. Why not just press the down button?”

Now, granted this is the first big game for Nodding Heads Games and I sure am nit-picking being a game designer myself, but I do love what it is and what it aspires to be. Raji: An Ancient Epic is a simple but new perspective in many aspects of what we generally assume video games to be. Storytelling, visuals, and audio seem to be the strongest suit for the game, based on this prologue. I wish all the success to the people behind it. It launches on 15th of October, 2020, on Steam.