There's been a lot of character reveals for Vagrus - The Riven Realms here on our website and on our social media since we began posting about a year ago. We figured it behooves us to talk a little more about who these characters are and what their role is in the game.

The vast majority of the characters you see revealed are enemy characters, even if sometimes they can be allies in the game for short periods of time (or versions of them, anyways). Although Events will involve these enemy characters often, you will mainly see them as shown in the artwork in turn-based combat. All of them have their unique combat skills and synergies with other enemies.

A lot of the Riven Realms are endless wastelands and deserts. Yet even in the deadliest of deserts, some life remains; thrives even. Most of that life tends to be found around an oasis.

Vagrus - The Riven Realms is a game rich in storylines and quests, and most of these appear in the form of what we call Events: text based interactions where your choices guide the story. There are a lot (and I mean a LOT) of these Events and due to their nature, writing for the game involves quite complex scripting and a non-linear narrative design angle. But what does this mean in practice and what does it involve?

The next character to be revealed is another enemy, although this one can often be encountered as a temporary ally as well: the elemental shaman of the Sadirar people.

The ancestors of the Sadirar survived the Calamity in underground vaults and left those several generations after the catastrophe. Upon going back to the surface, they found endless sand dunes, blinding sunlight, and searing temperatures in place of their dense forests and hills. In their hour of despair, however, the Great Spirits spoke to them and guided them to oases in the cruel desert. These spirits have been worshiped by the Sadirar ever since. Each spirit is the embodiment of an element: Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. Those that communicate with the Great Spirits and in turn command these elements are the shamans. The Sadirar are now a nomadic people who thrive in the deserts called the Searing Plains. They rose above cruel barbarism through spirit worship but are far from docile.

The Empire in the Riven Realms is based on the Roman Empire of our history, so it's no surprise that the gladiators of these cultures are also very similar.

This character artwork is that of the gladiator enemy that you can come across in arena battles. These arena or pit fights will feature in larger settlements, as the Empire of the Riven Realms is very fond of such bloody games.

Time for another project update! Seventy-seven days have passed by and even though it was summer - supposedly calmer times - it felt pretty frantic. In the good sense.

A huge Thank You! and wishing all the best to Marci

As your might remember, our previous post started with the news of Marci joining the team to complete his summer internship with us for his degree in software development. Marci has been instrumental to the progress we made on the Codex & Journal functionality and UI, as well as to catching up on our design documents. Now that he has returned to his studies, we wish him all the very best for his goal of finishing his Bachelor's degree. We're pleased to see that he is on the right track to become a great game developer!

Most fantasy adventures have an inn or two but in our case - in a game where you lead a caravan and its crew on all kinds of journeys - taverns and inns are vital and appear in almost every sizeable settlement.

The artwork you can see, the versions of which will serve as a backdrop for such watering holes in Vagrus, was painted by the amazing Péter Kovács. The image perfectly captures the alien feel of the world, the dark and hard fantasy elements, as well as the relatively peaceful atmosphere of an inn.

Quite a lot of you have asked us to provide a map for the continent of Xeryn, where Vagrus is set. The wait is over! Kind of.

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 it's now revealed in this video for the first time, to give you an idea how it'll work in-game.

Javek is one of our main characters in the Prologue and he'll hopefully make his return in the main game, too. A budding sorcerer with telepathic powers, he can read thoughts, see glimpses of the future, and even cause pain and damage to someone's mind.

His combat phases/poses reflect these abilities. Here's a list of skills the above displayed images are connected to:

The Codex is a tool in Vagrus that lets players read up on the world, its inhabitants, locations, lore, characters, and whatever else that has an entry. The idea was to provide players who wish to know more a place to find it and to allow you to look up things you may have forgotten; but to make this absolutely voluntary. If you do not wish to read these entries, you can still absolutely play Vagrus, as this is basically additional fluff.