KickStarter Vagrus: The Riven Realms - post-apocalyptic fantasy caravan master RPG - At the Heart of Ruin DLC coming early 2025

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Fig: https://www.fig.co/campaigns/vagrus-the-riven-realms

https://vagrus.com




https://af.gog.com/game/vagrus_the_riven_realms?as=1649904300
https://af.gog.com/game/vagrus_the_riven_realms_season_pass?as=1649904300

Spoiler

I've seen this mentioned on the codex but there wasn't a thread yet.
Just in August they started doing devlogs.

Website seems to have the most information.
https://vagrus.com/news

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660/Vagrus__The_Riven_Realms/

Embark on a perilous journey across a realm forsaken by the gods and devastated by an arcane cataclysm. Accompanied by a hardy crew, you are free to discover a dark fantasy world and its secrets. Trade, fight, or explore your way to success as the leader of a traveling company in Vagrus, a post-apocalyptic fantasy RPG-strategy hybrid developed by Lost Pilgrims Studio. Vagrus is a 2D 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.

EXPLORE A DARK CONTINENT
A vast continent is yours to explore, filled with unique locations, strange factions, lurking dangers, and a slew of characters you can interact with.

EXPERIENCE A BRANCHING NARRATIVE
A range of longer and shorter stories make up the game’s narrative in the form of events and quests. The choices you make in these affect the characters and the world around you.

ENGAGE IN TURN-BASED COMBAT
Take part in turn-based, tactical combat that involves your characters and a large variety of enemies, both humanoid and monstrous. Use a range of character skills and abilities to succeed.

MANAGE YOUR CREW
Most journeys have to be planned and prepared for carefully, lest they end in disaster. Manage your supplies, cargo, and crew effectively to survive.

ENCOUNTER A COLORFUL CAST OF CHARACTERS
The player can recruit fully-developed characters to the caravan to serve in versatile roles, such as scoutmaster, quartermaster or guard captain. Each of them comes with their own background and personal quests line.

Devlog 1
Devlog 2
Devlog 3

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Devlog #2 - Pre-Alpha Map Movement

Dear Followers,

As we promised earlier, here's an overview of the campaign map and movement rules. To understand it fully, we recommend you watch this short Youtube video in which we demonstrate the pre-alpha state of movement:



The Campaign Map Basics

• Movement on the world map is turned-based. Players start their turns (one turn equals a day in-game) with a number of available Movement Points.
• Players always stand on nodes, and can move between them (on the paths) by spending Movement Points.
• Based on the terrain, the road (if any), and weather conditions, as well as the distance of the next node, the cost of movement between nodes can be markedly different. You can see this represented by the little numbers next to each line on the video.
• As the available Movement Points are spent, the possibilities of the routes taken are narrowed down and that is represented by the nodes and lines fading away in the areas now unavailable for the caravan to move into.
• When the caravan runs out of Movement Points, it is unwilling to push on that given turn, and needs to Camp on the node it currently occupies. Camping refreshes Movement Points (and also has a lot of other functions, but more on those in a future post!).
• Movement Points are displayed on the top left UI. March movement points (available as bonus and calculated from normal Movement Points) are displayed in red behind normal Movement Points.
• There's the option to March, indicated by the red target node and path, which occurs when a caravan opts to move beyond its available Movement Points in a given turn. Marching decreases Morale and Vigor but could buy you time.
• Movement Point costs are displayed either in blue (normal movement MP cost), red (the additional cost of Marching), and grey (which only serves to help you calculate longer journeys, as these nodes are not reachable in the current turn, not even by Marching).

We hope you liked this update, first of many to follow! Feel free to pose questions, add comments, and follow us here or on any other social media channel. (You may find the links to those on Our homepage[vagrus.com])
Cheers,
The Lost Pilgrims Team

Devlog #3 - Interactive Continent Chart

In our last devlog (#2) we talked about movement and demonstrated how it worked on our digitally hand-painted campaign map. Since then, quite a lot of you have asked us to provide a map for the continent of Xeryn, where Vagrus is set. We are happy to share that the wait is over!

So in this third devlog, let's zoom out a bit together and look at the interactive continent chart of Xeryn, where the game is set.



Maps are awesome, beautiful things. As it turns out, maps are also complicated things, especially when you have to integrate them seamlessly into several game systems. So it's been in the works for a long time and the video should give you an idea of how it'll work in-game.

This interactive version shows most of the continent and as you can see, it's a gigantic and very detailed map. From a functional perspective, we've tried to mimic the easy navigation of Google Maps so you as players will be able to scroll in and out with your mouse zoom as well as and pan the map with left click+drag.

The region and other location names are tied to levels that make them appear and disappear depending on your zoom rate, so you see major regions 'breaking' up into smaller ones, minor settlements coming into view, and in the largest zoom, other points of interest appear. You, as the vagrus, the leader of your traveling company, might have many events, contracts, and rumors to consider when planning a longer journey, and the chart offers the possibility to 'Mark' settlements and other places so you would remember them.

Another interesting functionality we added is the link to the Codex entries that are tied to that certain location. We will talk about the Codex in a future devlog but let's just say for now that the Codex holds all the lore and background story about the world, ordered into entries tied to cultures, people, places, etc. Consider it the in-game wiki of the world, except you don't start with all that information readily available but you need to gather it throughout the game.

So back to the continent chart, the Prologue section of the game, which we plan on releasing this autumn, is taking place in the area called the Molten Tongue and then on the Searing Plains (it's pretty much the area you see when the chart shows up in the video for the first time). Later on, in Early Access, which we'll release sometime in 2019, the player is going to start from Tor'Zag's Shelter, which is both 'Marked' and shown in the Codex in the video.

In our next devlog, we'll shed some light on how the setting of the Riven Realms came to be, what the main sources of inspiration were, and how closely its genesis was tied to our TTRPG sessions since childhood. We are very interested to hear about your opinion about the chart and the game, of what you have seen so far. Feel free to pose questions and let us know what you would be interested in to read about in future devlogs.

Cheers,
The Lost Pilgrims Team

 

[CaesarCzech]

Gypsy Saga ? Why is everyone Coping banner saga all of sudden.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Gypsy Saga ? Why is everyone Coping banner saga all of sudden.

And the battle "animations" come from Darkest Dungeon...
The guy probably thinks getting bits and pieces from successful titles is a recipe for success.

I think talent and originality is.

 

[CaesarCzech]

Gypsy Saga ? Why is everyone Coping banner saga all of sudden.

And the battle "animations" come from Darkest Dungeon...
The guy probably thinks getting bits and pieces from successful titles is a recipe for success.

I think talent and originality is.

This stuff is Less original than Ashes of God atleast that stuff mixed freaking mass effect with fantasy reapers along with chinese aztecs serving the fantasy reapers. This looks like straight up copy.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I'm not a big ban of Ash of gods, the cards stuff turned me off.

Also, i couldn't get into it, for some reason and i fail to see why anyone would use Banner saga battle system, as far as i know, everyone hates it or barely tolerates it.

Well, as for this one, i hope i'm wrong and it turns out to be an average-good playable game.

 

[Sztaszov]

Updated: apparently there was a thread for Vagrus already which I could not find for some reason. Thanks TZ3K for sharing the devlogs here! Also to the folks giving the benefit of the doubt.
Our DM and myself as a player have been playing tabletop RPG for over two decades on our homebrew setting - The Riven Realms. Last year we took a leap of faith, quit our corporate jobs and started developing Vagrus.
We hope some of you will give it a chance and find it to your liking. Cheers!
P.s.: happy to answer any questions about the game, the team and/or the development process.

Original post:
Hey guys, not sure if any of you heard of Vagrus - The Riven Realms, an indie strategy-RPG that was announced recently.

'Embark on a perilous journey across a realm forsaken by the gods and devastated by a cataclysm. Accompanied by a hardy crew, you are free to discover a dark fantasy world and its secrets. Trade, fight, or explore your way to success as a leader of a traveling company in Vagrus, a post-apocalyptic fantasy RPG-strategy hybrid developed by Lost Pilgrims.'

The game has improved a lot since its first teaser video but it still gives a good idea about what to expect:


Vagrus is first and foremost a narrative RPG with a lot of story lines, also featuring tactical combat and turn-based movement on the world map.
We'd be happy to share more posts about Vagrus if you guys are interested. Also, feel free to delve more into the details on vagrus.com
Cheers, Sztaszov

Ps: I am part of the Lost Pilgrims team working on Vagrus so this post might count as self promo. Please let me know if that is not welcome and I will remove it.

 

[Sztaszov]

I'm not a big ban of Ash of gods, the cards stuff turned me off.

Also, i couldn't get into it, for some reason and i fail to see why anyone would use Banner saga battle system, as far as i know, everyone hates it or barely tolerates it.

Well, as for this one, i hope i'm wrong and it turns out to be an average-good playable game.

No cards in Vagrus, nor is it isometric like Banner Saga's battle system. It's has a western-JRPG style combat - also used masterfully in Darkest Dungeon - with a more realistic comic art style.
It is important to mention though, that Vagrus is a narrative RPG so it might be closer to Sunless Sea than those others.

 

[Darth Canoli]

No cards in Vagrus, nor is it isometric like Banner Saga's battle system. It's has a western-JRPG style combat - also used masterfully in Darkest Dungeon - with a more realistic comic art style.
It is important to mention though, that Vagrus is a narrative RPG so it might be closer to Sunless Sea than those others.

Interesting opinion.
I don't think Darkest combat is its best feature, it's the ambient (art-style, music, dungeon design ), the intro is really good as well.
As for the combat, it's ok but very limited, good enough for a rogue-like, people playing those games have a different agenda than those playing cRPG, the latter wanting to develop their characters and discover nex areas, fighting new monsters and getting interesting loot.
And for the demanding ones like myself, a good story or interesting companions or side-quest is a plus.

The bad things about Darkest dungeon is very limited character progression and limited use of combat skills (you even have to pick the one you can use, that's probably the worst thing) but i guess it's ok for a rogue-like. I'm not a big fan of the itemization either.

Just checked Sunless sea, seems you're into the Banner Saga/Darkest Dungeon vibe after all, looks like sunless sea got inspired by both.
Character progression also looks limited in Vagrus from the video but i might be wrong.

Good luck anyway.

 

[Sztaszov]

No cards in Vagrus, nor is it isometric like Banner Saga's battle system. It's has a western-JRPG style combat - also used masterfully in Darkest Dungeon - with a more realistic comic art style.
It is important to mention though, that Vagrus is a narrative RPG so it might be closer to Sunless Sea than those others.

Interesting opinion.
I don't think Darkest combat is its best feature, it's the ambient (art-style, music, dungeon design ), the intro is really good as well.
As for the combat, it's ok but very limited, good enough for a rogue-like, people playing those games have a different agenda than those playing cRPG, the latter wanting to develop their characters and discover nex areas, fighting new monsters and getting interesting loot.
And for the demanding ones like myself, a good story or interesting companions or side-quest is a plus.

The bad things about Darkest dungeon is very limited character progression and limited use of combat skills (you even have to pick the one you can use, that's probably the worst thing) but i guess it's ok for a rogue-like. I'm not a big fan of the itemization either.

Just checked Sunless sea, seems you're into the Banner Saga/Darkest Dungeon vibe after all, looks like sunless sea got inspired by both.
Character progression also looks limited in Vagrus from the video but i might be wrong.

Good luck anyway.

Thanks a lot!

Agreed. The character progression in Darkest Dungeon is very limited. As you say, it was designed for its rogue-like gameplay, which is great - in my opinion - but is far from the expectation from a role-playing game.

In Vagrus character progression is fairly different. In terms of combat there are a limited number of skills just like DD but there are combat traits that spice those up.
On the other hand in Vagrus the characters can choose from a variety of perks that come into play in the narrative decisions and tests. Like certain choices require perks (i.e.: you must have demonology perk taken 3x across you as the leader and your companions to be able perform/undo a ritual.) or help in tests during choices (i.e.: you have a better chance of judging whether the fruits you have just found on a bush are edible or posionous if you have herb-lore or alchemy taken as perks.) Another mechanics is around characters being promoted to Deputy roles like Scout Master, Chief Handler or Guard Captain that have significant effect on your 'comitatus' (armed caravan). Learning into those Deputy roles requires certain perks to be developed first.
Also, character progression in Vagrus is not only down to Insight and Profession points (XP) but tied to the characters' personal story lines (every third level, as per the current design). Meaning, as their story advances more options open up for the characters. (Higher level perks, skills, etc.)

There is a four parts devlog series about character design focusing on different aspects: I. Characters in general, II. Character design process, III. Art asset preparations and IV. Character stats.
I am going to link the first one here in case you and/or others were interested: https://gamejolt.com/games/vagrus/3...part-1-over-the-weekend-you-guys-vot-zyazpee7

Thanks, cheers! Sztaszov

 

[Serus]

[...] Darkest dungeon [...] a rogue-like [...]

 

[Darth Canoli]

Sztaszov

About the companions quests, well, it's a double-edged sword, i wish you good luck on this one, most games do it quite wrong.
Tyranny for instance, very interesting companions, boring/anticlimactic (nonsense ?) companions side-quests.

Anyway, looking forward to try a demo to get a better feel of the battle system.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

For those who have the time and are interested in helping the devs, they will soon be starting Alpha testing:

Prologue Alpha testing is opening up, folks!

- So I can just apply & play the demo before everyone?
- Well, you get see the game early but you actually have to test & report bugs.
- OK! When?
- When we get to 1k+ followers on Game Jolt. So go and share this!

Note that we plan to release folks on the game gradually, so we would get feedback on each build, instead of exhausting the whole pool of testers too early. Also, because we have limited bandwidth to organize people.

For those reasons we will ask volunteers to fill in a questionnaire based on which we will assess and decide who will be ‘deployed’ for testing when (if at all).

From the games’s perspective, consider this:

• The Prologue is still in development both in terms of functionality and stability. Do not apply if you like things running smooth.
• The Prologue walks you - as the player - through a story that happened in the past and as such narrows down the path you can take.
• The Prologue is also the Tutorial of the game and at present there is no option to skip it. So if you dislike tutorials…
• The game is not optimized yet so might experience - event significant - performance issues on certain configs, especially laptops. (We will of course fix that in time, no worries!)

Still interested? Here are some additional things to be aware of:

• The purpose of the testing is to help to improve the game, not to provide earlier access to people. So we will expect the participants to…
• give feedback: fill in questionnaires, submit bugs and formulate their opinion;
• be available through chat/voice to learn details about their observations - means you need to join our Discord server.

Damn, we’ve tried everything to dissuade them but some of them are still reading…okay, let’s just give them what they want…

So, here’s what you need to do:

1. Apply through this link
2. Wait patiently!
3. Be cool even if you don’t get invited to test, or only later in time.

Source: https://vagrus.com/news/we-want-you-for-testing

 

[Sztaszov]

Hey Guys, We've shared one of our most popular illustrations as a wallpaper reward on GameJolt. Feel free to grab it!
https://gamejolt.com/games/vagrus/352743/devlog/to-all-vagrus-fans-you-helped-to-spread-the-word-during-sapdtdb
Pick your preferred screen ratio from 16:9, 16:10, 4:3 or 21:9. Cheers!

 

[Sztaszov]

Hey Guys, some of you asked about the tactical combat so here's an update on that front. Hope you find it informative. Source: https://vagrus.com/news/companion-combat-improvements
[Mind you, the game has just recently moved from Pre-Alpha to Alpha development stage. Also, Vagrus is first and foremost a narrative RPG, not a dungeon crawler.]



'During the first wave of Alpha testing just recently, we've received a lot of useful feedback, especially on the UI (and Combat UI specifically). We've been keenly aware that these elements needed a rework and labored hard on improvements. We are happy to report on how far we've got:

Targeting and Active Turn
For many who played the game, a common grievance was the relatively clunky nature of target selection in Companion combat, as well as deciphering the sequence of actions. This was mainly due to yet unimplemented UI elements. We have since then added an improved targeting UI scheme which highlights everything better:

• There's more indication as to whose turn it is
• Also who/what the available targets are
• We've added hover highlights on target positions
• And confirm states after target selection

In the next sprint or so we're planning to add more textual guidance and sound effects to combat as well (round counter and announcement before a round, display of the entity that begins its turn, and so on).

Combat Log
There's been a bunch of improvements to the combat log, too, which now has easier-to-understand templates and more informative texts in general. We believe the overhaul had a great effect on usability.

Tooltips
This might seem trivial but adding a ton of new dynamic tooltips (especially in combat) makes combat much smoother and easier to understand. In a stat-heavy game such as Vagrus, we felt that this change brought a lot of clarity and usability.

We're super-excited as we're nearing a more public reveal of the Prologue with each successive build. Thank you so much for helping this come to life!'

 

[Sztaszov]

Our team just crossed one million key strokes for the narrative of Vagrus. Yay!
[Link to source tweet & post]

Well, we have just passed another major milestone in our content creation progress.

As mentioned in one of our posts last week, with our Prologue ready from a content perspective, our writers have been already working on the Early Access stories for Vagrus.

In the Prologue we have well over one hundred thousand words worth of story and lore coming together from Events and Codex entries. Actually, even a bit more since the Narration and Tutorial texts are coming through another source and so are not included in the above numbers. Those two make up over four thousand words on top.

Mind you, Events are complex beasts with all their dependencies, choices and consequences, and the scripting of all those are included in the numbers. So let's look at those a bit as well, shall we?

While playing the Prologue, you may run into close to a hundred events with over six hundred steps and twice as many choices you can pick from. Well, provided you meet the necessary requirements for said choices.

The Prologue is the narrative exposition for the setting of the Riven Realms and also serves as the tutorial of the game, and so it starts off leading you as the player through a very narrow path and then gradually opens up both in terms of functionality and narrative choices. It reaches its zenith in Act IV, after you leave Avernum, from which point onwards you are free to lead your comitatus to almost any direction you want. Of course, success is far from guaranteed, so you need to carefully plan your trips considering all the information available to you, lest your journey end up in disaster, be it a deadly confrontation, financial ruin, or your own crew leaving you due to bad morale. Are you ready to try it yourself?

The story awaits you: Conquer the wasteland!

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Everything about this looks awesome, except for one thing. I think the character sprites don't look that great. It looks like the artist went for a gritty style (the ones in the combat vid), but didn't quite get it right.

 

[Sztaszov]

Earlier today Lost Pilgrims Studio, the team developing Vagrus - The Riven Realms announced opening up the Prologue section of their game on Game Jolt sometime next week.
[Source: tweet & Game Jolt post]

'The Prologue is the narrative exposition for the setting of the Riven Realms and also serves as the tutorial of the game, and so it starts off leading you as the player through a very narrow path and then gradually opens up both in terms of functionality and narrative choices. It reaches its zenith in Act IV, after you leave Avernum, from which point onwards you are free to lead your comitatus to almost any direction you want. Of course, success is far from guaranteed, so you need to carefully plan your trips considering all the information available to you, lest your journey end up in disaster, be it a deadly confrontation, financial ruin, or your own crew leaving you due to bad morale. Are you ready to try it yourself?

The story awaits you: Conquer the wasteland!'

 

[Skdursh]

Darkest Dungeon isn't a good game. The combat was shit and considering how 99.9% of that game IS the combat it logically follows that the game is also shit.

 

[Sztaszov]

Darkest Dungeon isn't a good game. The combat was shit and considering how 99.9% of that game IS the combat it logically follows that the game is also shit.

Well, it depends on one's preference I guess but Darkest Dungeon is a dungeon crawler indeed, we agree on that.

Vagrus - The Riven Realms is - as opposed to DD - first and foremost a narrative game, so the players spend most of their time readying story and lore through events and codex entries. Then there is a good chunk of management and of course some combat too.
The Prologue being a narrative exposition of the setting, also serving as the tutorial for the game (Early Access planned in 2019) is even more story heavy since it needs to introduce those aspects. I hope this helps!

 

[Sztaszov]

Hey Guys, The Prologue of Vagrus - The Riven Realms has just entered First Access on Game Jolt. It has more 8-12 hours of content (depends on play style) and for a limited time it's set to 'Pay as you want'. Enjoy!
[Source: tweet & GameJolt post]

 

[Sztaszov]

Hey Guys, here's a well paced Let's play video of Vagrus Prologue. Nookrium reads snippets from the story events, and brings across the dark atmosphere of the setting, the Riven Realms brilliantly. Hope you enjoy it!

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[Sztaszov]

New Vagrus Prologue build (0.1.5) is available on GameJolt and Itchio
[Source: website & twitter]

You can find the list of improvements here:

• GameJolt:
  
  https://gamejolt.com/games/vagrus/3...-is-now-available-here-on-atgamejolt-p5s3ctbs
• Itchio:
  
  https://lostpilgrims.itch.io/vagrus...-prologue-build-is-available-now-on-linux-too

 

[Rahdulan]

How in the hell have I not heard about this before? Looks great.