NODDING HEADS GAMES

How an Indian studio defied the odds to develop a culturally rich adventure

- KHEE HOON CHAN

Shruti Ghosh and Ian Maude, two of the co-founders of Nodding Heads Games, are exhausted. Fatigue is etched on their faces, clearly visible even through the grainy video footage of our Skype conversation. In the background, a dog yowls off-camera, while a few others slump onto a sofa, soon dozing off under the hot and humid weather in Pune, India. Both developers, sometimes accompanied by the studio’s third co-founder Avichal Singh, joining the call remotely from his place, have been out most nights feeding over 200 stray dogs on the streets. This is in addition to the work they’ve put into their game: Raji: An Ancient Epic. “There’s always rescue cases and accidents, and all these we have to take care of as well, because we just love them a lot. So the last few months have been really, really difficult. We’ve hardly had any rest. Avi [Singh] has been looking after Snowy” – their dog – “and working on the game,” Ghosh says.

Over the past few years, Nodding Heads has barely had a moment’s rest. Faced with a depleting pool of personal savings, the studio was caught in a frantic rush to seek funding for Raji within a few months, ever since the game’s Kickstarter campaign failed to gain traction in November 2017. “We had the rug pulled from beneath us, and we had no backup plan. And this was really scary for us,” Maude says. “But what we always do is we just adapt. That’s what we’ve always done. And we were initially looking at, how far can our funds go? What are we going to do? Shruti ended up selling her apartment to work to help fund the team.