Stone forests are comprised of thousands upon thousands of standing, pointed stone spires or pillars of varying heights and girth. Carved by arcane winds initially, and further chipped by the unceasing gales ever since the post-Calamity wastelands were formed, these forests are now mazes of rocks and gullies where one can easily get lost. Occasionally, a 'stone tree' falls when there's movement about, which makes navigating these labyrinths even riskier.

This is a week we have been waiting for so long. Finally we can announce some pretty cool things coming up. Well, as our most informed supporters, you have heard about some of them but probably not this one yet.

As we are cycling through and iterating the various UI elements of the game, we have now arrived to the Codex and gave it a neat little redesign. Many of you have enjoyed reading Codex entries (yay!) and we wanted to upgrade and update the experience, especially along the lines of your feedback.

Foul-mouthed, easy-going, hearty, and chatty, the creature now known as 'Vorax' (meaning 'ravenous' in Imperial) is an undead abomination who can become one of your companions. He woke up one day in this bloated unliving form with no memory whatsoever of who he was or what he had done to deserve this fate. Yet his will is free, unbound to dark magicians (a rarity for undead), so he decided not to worry about it and get about his new 'life' with great enthusiasm.

A lot has happened since our last project post where we looked back on 2018 as a sort of a year assessment.

Prologue

We finished the year with releasing the Prologue section of Vagrus just around Christmas. Our hopes were high and the results were... even better! Let's delve into the details.

Superb news! Vagrus has been picked as one of the Top 10 upcoming itch.io #indiegames by 'ClemmyGames - The Best Of Indie Games'!

The Empire has been strewn with ruined fortresses and keeps since the Calamity. Additionally, the brutal wars and conflicts ever since the catastrophe have done considerable damage to the reclaimed and rebuilt forts, leaving many in disrepair or outright abandoned. Fort Larius, Fort Teltulis, Fort Tirnos, one of the Twin Towers - the list goes on and on.

Another crucial game mechanic that is being added to Vagrus as we are writing this is a system of Rumors. Rumors are short entries in your Journal that are meant to guide players to content and unlock locations on their Chart in order to help them plan journeys and find places. We have come to the conclusion during playtesting that not only do we need to differentiate these Rumor entries from your Objectives in the Journal but we also need to separate them entirely and move them to a different pane. As evident from this, Rumors have undergone quite a lot of change since their original conception.

Have you met the kingpin Skornar in the Prologue? He's quite the colorful sort. Good news is: he'll make his return in the main game as a Companion you can recruit! Ten years older and much grumpier, the warrior has a serious grudge against those who ousted him from Avernum's criminal underworld. Yet his story arc will involve much more than that, with the central theme of coping with growing old - not an easy plight for a warrior and leader such as Skornar.

The images above are from one of the starting regions of the main game, shedding some light on parts of the huge campaign map the player can traverse in Vagrus.

We can already hear you ask: 'But guys... why don't you show off the whole map?'