Today we celebrate the 1-year anniversary of the full release of Vagrus – The Riven Realms. We are happy to have reached this point, and perhaps most importantly, we couldn’t have done it without the help of our backers, supporters, and players along the way. So here’s to you, vagri, for all your encouragement, assistance, feedback, and goodwill! In this post, we’ll be taking a little bit of a trip down memory lane, from the beginning and creation of the game to its release exactly one year ago. We’ll finish up with a small glimpse into the future of Vagrus and what players can expect moving forward.

We first imparted our vision for Vagrus back in 2017, establishing Lost Pilgrims, with a small team of just four developers. We had and still have a love of games, strategy, and tabletop roleplaying, but when it all started, we might say that we were a little naive. Not because releasing a game we could all be proud of was impossible – indeed, where we stand now makes it more apparent than ever that it wasn’t. However, we were naive in that we did not fully comprehend the gargantuan task in front of us, nor the intensity with which we would have to work to create the game we wanted and promised to our backers. We’ve always said that the game is a labor of love, and that’s exactly what we needed to cross the finish line: love. Oh, and a lot of hard work, naturally!

Nevertheless, in July 2020 we released our first public build – an Early Access version of the game already featuring a ton of content. We continued to plod forward before eventually dropping a full release of the game on October 5, 2021. We were blown away by some of the critical reception to the game’s launch, some of the highlights (like being included in IndieDB’s PlayersChoice top ten), having the game covered by numerous high-profile media outlets, along with receiving a plethora of awards and nominations, most of which can be found on our Steam page for those interested.

All in all, we were greatly honored by the critical reception of the game, and by the wealth of positivity about it from many independent content creators on YouTube, such as SplatterCatGaming, who covers indie games extensively (and covered ours here). After the success of the game’s full release, we immediately set ourselves to the task of finding a new office, and to recruiting additional Lost Pilgrims. The process began with Ákos, a graphic and UX/UI designer. Then, in February, we took on Viktor and Beni as coders and programmers, and finally, in April, we welcomed James and Zeli to the team as new writers to be able to keep adding content in the long run.

We were also able to create various merch for the game provided to those who backed us on higher tiers or who purchased the Emperor’s Edition. While we were certainly elated to see what we had worked on brought to life in physical form, the process was far more daunting and difficult than we had anticipated. Regardless, you can take a look at merch here, and we’d also like to say that there are those who have still not claimed their goodies because we do not have their addresses; if that’s you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us and we will send it along.

Moving forward now, let’s focus on what has happened since release. We have continued to improve the game, adding a slew of quality-of-life features such as custom notes, map movement UI reworks, a slew of Companion Combat improvements, and a complete overhaul of Scouting – as requested by the community on many occasions.

On the content side, we started out with Kingpins of the Realms: a sizable patch introducing new questlines for the Loaders’ and Carpenters’ guilds, then releasing our first free DLC with the new companion Vorax in May. More recently (last week) we released Seekers of Knowledge, our second free DLC and major content addition, which has further expanded the ways players can achieve victory in the game by acquiring Codex entries and working towards the Knowledge Ambition’s fulfillment. It is our hope that these pieces of content will pave the way for our next big DLC – a paid piece of content that we have just begun working on, and that will open up an entirely new region for vagri eager to continue or resume their journey in the Riven Realms! Provided that everything goes swimmingly when we can release this content next year, we have many more ideas for future additions to the game moving forward.

We hope you have enjoyed this little trip down memory lane, and a short glimpse into the future. We have a great deal more to speak about in the coming weeks, so – until then – stay tuned, stay safe and conquer the wasteland!

– The Lost Pilgrims Team

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