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Game News Vagrus - The Riven Realms is a post-apocalyptic fantasy strategy RPG, now on Fig Open Access

Infinitron

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Tags: Lost Pilgrims Studio; Vagrus - The Riven Realms

Vagrus - The Riven Realms is an upcoming strategy RPG where you play as a caravan leader in a Dark Sun-like post-apocalyptic dark fantasy world. At a glance Vagrus appears similar to Failbetter's Sunless Sea games, with abstract world exploration, text-based events, resource management and plenty of lore, although unlike those games it has turn-based party combat. The game has been in development at Hungarian indie studio Lost Pilgrims since late 2017 and has now made its way to Fig. It's the first game to make use of a new kind of Fig campaign called Fig Open Access, which is basically like Steam Early Access but with stretch goal-like milestones. You can read more about that here. So here's the campaign trailer and the description from the game's Steam page:



Vagrus is a Strategy-Roleplaying Game for PC, where the player takes the role of a vagrus - a sort of a caravan leader, who makes a living on a strange and dangerous dark fantasy world by leading a traveling company on all kinds of ventures.

A Dark Continent
A vast continent is yours to explore, filled with unique locations, strange factions, lurking dangers, and a lot of characters you can interact with. In order to punish the Empire for their sins a thousand years ago, the Elder Gods manifested themselves in the world, letting loose powers that ended up devastating it. Following this Calamity, the Empire was slow to rebuild and became a dark caricature of its former image. The continent is now a wasteland, riddled with arcane anomalies, twisted monsters, and undead.

Branching Narrative
A large selection of longer and shorter stories make up the game’s narrative in the form of events and quests. The choices you make in these often affect the companions and the world around you. Pick your background from trader, mercenary, or explorer; work for factions, follow rumors and trading opportunities; acquire wealth, gain fame, and discover hidden knowledge. The world is sandbox, yet it is filled with hand-crafted content.

Turn-Based Combat
Engage in turn-based, tactical combat that involves your companions and a large variety of enemies, both humanoid and monstrous. Use a wide range of character skills to succeed, as well as your own leadership-related abilities. Positioning and support skills are of paramount importance when your companions struggle against powerful foes.

Resource Management
Most journeys have to be planned and prepared for carefully, lest they end in disaster. Manage your supplies, morale, and the freshness of your people effectively to survive. Haul cargo and valuables across the wasteland or take it from others. Your crew of workers, fighters, scouts, and slaves have to be managed to optimize their effectiveness. Equip your caravan with upgrades and your companions with magical gear.

Unique Companions
The player can recruit a wide variety of companions into the caravan to serve in versatile roles, such as scoutmaster, guard captain, quartermaster, or navigator. Each of them comes with their own combat skills, background stories, and personal quest lines that, when completed, can upgrade them in unforeseen ways. They can progress through experience levels to become more potent crew members as well as in combat.

You can secure a copy of Vagrus - The Riven Realms for $28, plus there's a $5 discount graciously granted to all Codex users by Lost Pilgrims. Preordering it will grant immediate access to the current alpha build via Discord. The game hasn't earned a whole lot of money but it's been enough to unlock five milestones already. The final version is supposed to come out sometime next year.
 

Arulan

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313
It looks interesting. I'd back it, but...

To the developers if you're reading this: If you can't guarantee your backers, the people who are putting their faith in you, with an interest-free loan, that if (a risk backers are taking) the game finishes development they'll be getting a key on the platform they've chosen (Steam, GOG, etc.) then you have no business crowd-funding.
 

luj1

You're all shills
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Banner saga meets Kenshi and kingdom management.... Maybe 5 years ago but now its most likely a pass for me
 

Van-d-all

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This doesn't seem like Banner Saga at all other than the narrative conceit of being a caravan leader.
Good for you if it's enough to satisfy your sense of originality then.

LOL @ mentioning things like Dark Sun, Kenshi or even Black Company after Tyranny came out.
I doubt majority of Trany's audience even knows about the 30y old stuff like Black Company or Darksun.
 

Sztaszov

Lost Pilgrims
Developer
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Nov 7, 2018
Messages
73
Hey Guys, all great feedback, thanks a lot! We can totally get that some of you are looking for certain things that are not there yet so early on in the development (Vagrus is only in Alpha stage now), also that not even the final version may be appealing to everyone. No game is, so we are at peace with that. The good thing is that Fig's Open Access campaign is open-ended meaning it will be there for many months to come so you guys can decide - or not - to back it when your specific concern gets addressed to your satisfaction.

To reflect on the great points raised:

- Do not like the speed/look/etc. of certain mechanics in the game
- Yep, none of us do. They look like a game in Alpha. :) As we progress the development further there will be changes coming to almost every facet of the game. | Suggest to check back on the game in about 6-9 months when it is much closer to Beta and is more representative of what you could expect from the game when it releases.

- Not sure about the setting, whether it can show anything new compared to some other - great! - games
- That is definitely down to personal preferences so what I would suggest is to try the free demo which is available via our Discord server (discord.gg/vagrus). Check the #readme channel for bot commands to get access. While from feature and gameplay perspective it is subject to massive changes, it does justice to the setting, The Riven Realms, very well so you should be able to decide if Vagrus was for you or not.

- Looks too much like Banner Sage (aka: where is the open-world / no main story approach?)
- The currently available stand-alone story, Pilgrims of the Wasteland, is indeed a bit more Banner Saga-like than the main game will eventually be. That will have a narrative much closer to Sunless Sea, in the sense of having smaller - or larger - stories and random event scattered across the wastelands of the Riven Realms. Suggest to check back on the project in about 3-6 months by which time the open-world part will have been already added and see for yourself what it can offer.

- I want to get confirmation on my preferred platform before pledging
- Completely fair. We contacted GOG but they turned us away for now as 'they did not review games in Alpha 'and suggested that 'we should reach out again when Vagrus is much closer to final release in terms of readiness'. | Suggest to check back in 6-9 months to see if we got an update on the matter.

Again, thanks a lot for all the interest in the project, and the valid critique too. As we continue our journey we believe we will be able to address many of the current concerns but of course you will be the judge of that. Hope to see you checking back on Vagrus in the coming months to see it for yourselves. Cheers!
 

hexer

Guest
Finally an interesting fantasy setting!
And they cited Planescape, Dark Sun and Morrowind as inspirations.


:d1p:
 

Arulan

Cipher
Joined
Feb 13, 2014
Messages
313
The setting is certainly an attractive point.

- I want to get confirmation on my preferred platform before pledging
- Completely fair. We contacted GOG but they turned us away for now as 'they did not review games in Alpha 'and suggested that 'we should reach out again when Vagrus is much closer to final release in terms of readiness'. | Suggest to check back in 6-9 months to see if we got an update on the matter.

Again, thanks a lot for all the interest in the project, and the valid critique too. As we continue our journey we believe we will be able to address many of the current concerns but of course you will be the judge of that. Hope to see you checking back on Vagrus in the coming months to see it for yourselves. Cheers!

Thanks for the information.

What about Steam? They won't refuse your game.

What I'm getting at is if you take an exclusivity deal, and I hope you don't, that backers have a guarantee that in the negotiations you'll refuse to back down from getting your backers the keys for the platform they backed. I think that's only fair.
 

aratuk

Cipher
Joined
Dec 13, 2013
Messages
466
Anyone notice there's a city called Avernum on their map? Does Vogel know about this?

4b2025bf-4765-49dd-8faa-1cfe277b6388


Edit: :thumbsup:
Although crew morale management sim isn't my favorite game dynamic, this looks p intriguing, so I press purchase.
 
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