Game Review - Raji: Prologue

Game Review: Raji: Prologue by Nodding Heads Games
Score: +7/-2

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. She must use the powers granted to her by the gods to rescue her brother as she battles to face the demon lord Mahabalasura.

I really do appreciate it when a game has a free mini version like this Prologue. Often games try to market themselves with a fancy video of wow-inspiring visuals but at the end you really still have no idea how the game handles. And then they expect you to drop big money betting that it's gonna play great (which is a very subjective evaluation).
I think bad bets are part of the reason that there's still so much game software piracy: People don't want to spend money without trying it out. Even the software pirating outfits tell you to support the devs and often won't update their distributions beyond the earliest playable release.

Raji: Prologue is basically a short free game (available on Steam) giving you an idea of what the whole game is like. It's very not-Western and just for the culture shift away from fantasy settings that all look too much alike and too Western, it's worth a look at least.

++ Art is beautiful and the South Asian cultural elements are novel and refreshing.

+ At appropriate zones the camera automatically zooms to a proper distance to reveal the epic scope of the locations and let you see the vistas well, ensuring none of the art is wasted. In most games you have to think to look up or you'll miss the grandeur (if any). This is of course helped by the basically linear path in the map design and open spaces so that you don't have the typical sudden-obstruction or sudden-zoom that automatic cameras can suffer from because of an obstacle between the camera and the player character.

+ At appropriate zones the camera automatically zooms to a proper distance to reveal the epic scope of the locations and let you see the vistas well, ensuring none of the art is wasted. In most games you have to think to look up or you'll miss the grandeur (if any). This is of course helped by the basically linear path in the map design and open spaces so that you don't have the typical sudden-obstruction or sudden-zoom that automatic cameras can suffer from because of an obstacle between the camera and the player character.

+ A no-reading no-voiceover tutorial using ghostly images to convey what you need to do.

++- Combat is challenging/frustrating in part because of all the jumping and dodging you need to do, combined with maneuvers involving walls and pillars. It feels like some platforming incorporated into combat and can feel hectic so if you don't like too much of that you might find it frustrating. At the same time it makes good use of height and aerial maneuvers and has the look and feel of acrobatic combat.
Even just moving around the game world might involve platforming with multiple jumps at just the right time. If that's not for you, I'd be cautious about the full game and maybe wait for some reviews to talk about it.

- The demo feels quite stable but there are fundamental design issues that might be worrying for having made it into any release. For example, your aim is not related to where you are facing, but where your mouse is pointing. It would have been more intuitive to convey this by changing the mouse pointer into a reticle instead of having the player figure it out. When it can take someone two hours to figure it out, the UI needs to be improved.