Offline Human Studios Receives an Epic MegaGrant for Vilaayath Budha – The Sandalwood Survival
Vilaayath Budha – The Sandalwood Survival is an open-world survival game set in Kerala's Marayoor sandalwood forests. Players take on the role of Double Mohan, a character from the Malayalam film Vilaayath Budha, navigating dangerous terrain to find and haul the world's rarest sandalwood. Built on real Western Ghats elevation data with artistic enhancements, the game explores Mohan’s journey through the forest landscape. Featuring intense and challenging offroad tracks and weapon handling, Vilaayath Budha aims to deliver an authentic South Indian cinematic experience.
Offline Human Studios, the independent studio from Kerala, India, has received an Epic MegaGrant, which will be used to support the project on Unreal Engine 5.
“Vilaayath Budha is the most ambitious project we have taken on -a full open world of Marayoor in the Western Ghats, targeting primarily Android and iOS devices. The Epic MegaGrant provides valuable support to complete the game the way we envisioned it, and to bring a story rooted in Kerala to players worldwide.”
— Sharath Ravi, Founder & CEO, Offline Human Studios
The game leverages Unreal Engine 5's mobile capabilities: an advanced locomotion system built on top of the Game Animation Sample Project (GASP), a licensed MetaHuman likeness of actor Prithviraj Sukumaran, Sequencer for in-game cinematics, MetaSounds for dynamic spatial audio, Procedural Content Generation (PCG) for dense foliage, and World Partition with HLOD to stream expansive forest environments on mobile hardware.
What's in the game
Terrain generated from real heightmap data, recreating the Western Ghats landscape on mobile.
Off-road vehicle driving across challenging, rugged terrain.
A dynamic environment and active weather system.
Living-world AI: NPCs follow their own routines and react to player actions.
Early access is live now on iOS and Android with more than 100,000 organic downloads. Chapter 1, Marayoor Mist, is in active development, with further chapters to follow.
About Offline Human Studios
Offline Human Studios is an independent game studio based in Kerala, India, founded and led by Sharath Ravi. The studio creates original IP-first games drawn from Indian mythology, regional lore, sports, and science fiction - made in India, for the world - and ships and iterates in public.
In association with Urvassi Theatres.
