Game News Vagrus - The Riven Realms now available on Early Access

[Infinitron]

Tags: Lost Pilgrims Studio; Vagrus - The Riven Realms

The free prologue demo of Vagrus: The Riven Realms has been available for almost two months now, first as part of the GOG Summer Sale, then during the Steam Game Festival, and finally as a permanent release on Steam two weeks ago. Our users who tried it out were pretty impressed, praising the game for its excellent lore and atmosphere. Earlier this month, developer Lost Pilgrims announced that they would also be releasing an Early Access version of Vagrus on July 22nd. The Early Access build is based on the alpha builds previously available only to Fig backers and is much larger than the prologue. Here's its trailer and an excerpt from the Early Access FAQ:

Why Early Access?
Vagrus is a narrative-heavy game so unless you know for sure that you enjoy reading a lot, we suggest trying our FREE Prologue to give you a taste of what to expect.
The setting of Vagrus is a dark, gruesome world and accordingly, the game is hard. If you are looking for a casual experience, Vagrus might not be a good choice.

Vagrus has been developed for close to three years now and we have always used a decidedly open development process from the start. We have involved players whenever we could - we shared details on our progress and decisions while they shared their valuable insights so that we could tweak the experience. We started with a few fans and gradually grew that audience. By now, thousands have played Vagrus and its demo. All this happened to prepare for finally bringing the game to Steam and opening it up to a huge player base in the form of Early Access. This way we can continue involving players to eventually be able to deliver a unique game between our vision and their preferences.

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
Our current plan is to release Vagrus sometime in 2021, so it will definitely stay in Early Access for at least six months, most likely even more. The date will be very much dependent on how we progress with content creation, as well as on the addition and improvement of features based on player feedback, and of course the final polishing stage.

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
The current Vagrus build has approximately 50 hours of content and most of the major features have been deployed by now, but we still have plans to add more. The full version will have a bigger world for players to explore with more settlements, points of interest, recruitable companions, and playable stories, of course. It will include completely new features (like mercenary tasks), extensions of existing elements (like crew combat tactics and actions), user interface improvements, and more.

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
The currently available 50 hours of content come together from two parts:

‘Pilgrims of the Wasteland’ is a standalone story that initially is a more linear and text-heavy experience, with less branching in the overall story, albeit full of choices and consequences within the events themselves. It introduces the world, some characters, game mechanics, and concepts gradually, opening up more in its second half. Its estimated playtime is 7-10 hours (depending on playstyle).

In the open-world main campaign, you can create your own character (vagrus) and travel anywhere in a huge game world from the start. The campaign already has a gigantic region with dozens of settlements and points of interest to explore, six companions you can recruit, scores of enemy types, character creation, and a ton of story content for you to discover. Players who spent time in it suggested it holds approximately 40 hours of content, and we know that some of them have spent more than a hundred hours in the game already.
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The Vagrus: The Riven Realms Early Access release is available on Steam and GOG for $30, with a 10% launch discount until next week. That's not particularly cheap, but as you can see they're not afraid to admit that this is a niche game.

 

[Gwendo]

There's already a lot of bitching and moaning about this game not having regional pricing...

 

[Vladimuar]

There's already a lot of bitching and moaning about this game not having regional pricing...

Fuckin regional losers must kill themselves.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I'm buying this one out of support. I played some of the demo and enjoyed aspects of it enough.

 

[Whisper]

How much content compared to full game is there?

 

[Thac0]

I got myself a copy, interesting game. First off this is not a narrative rpg, depsite what the marketing might tell you. The gameplay is much more similar to star traders: Frontiers. You manage a caravan, set trade routes, whip slaves into shape and manage food and horribly die by the hands of a slave revolt in the middle of the scorching desert after a supernatural encounter shattered your morale and slave obedience.
It is also much more unforgiving than Star Traders, while I could wing my very first run in star traders easily by just playing how a merchant/diplomat would play, the same approach in Vagrus has utterly crippled my caravan. Not to say that merchants are weak here, but the gameplay is much harder. The difficulty is however annoyingly amblified by many UI elements being bad or just missing. Buying too much of a good can fuck your entire run, and there is no undo purchase option.
Now comparing it to Star Traders it has a little more narrative, and the setting is extremely cool, however their prose varies between adequate and decent. Luckily you can just skim by a lot of the text, the gameplay options tell you what matters. So the text box is some mediocre wank about how a building arises from the mirage of the desert, but the option you get are enter, roll a skill check to investigate, something locked off by a perk and leave.
Now the design goal if the development goes smoothly is a better Star Traders due to much more interesting setting, better graphics and a more challenging gameplay loop. Currently the game is extremely cranky around all edges however. I would only recommend it if you played Star Traders or a similar game and want more.