Last week marked the third occasion that the annual Turn-based Thursday Fest showcased some of the best turn-based indie-games on the market. There were hundreds of participating RPGs, sims, grand strategy games, deckbuilders, 4X games, roguelikes, puzzlers, city builders, and much, much more to choose from. This year it was even bigger and more spectacular than the previous years, presenting well-known games such as Baldur’s Gate 3, showing that turn-based games are still very much “in”. 

In the northwestern reaches of Varnurud, a monument to Dwarven splendor rises from a stone platform, a vestige of ruined Dvendar Tharr – its immense size and state of preservation are testaments to the craftsmanship and skillful architecture of the ancient Dwarves of the faded kingdom.

Though none who dwell in these forsaken lands now know its origin, some theorize that the statue was erected to honor a thane or king whose name was lost to time in the millennium since the Calamity. As for its name, “the Hollow King”, it is unknown if it is a metaphor for the king that once was or simply a descriptor; indeed, its interior has been hollowed out and the cavernous gullets that bore inside the mountain from its base share the characterization.

Since Vagrus’s console release on the 31st of March, life at the studio has been hectic. We’ve been fixing bugs and trying to keep up with the deluge of coverage on offer. It’s almost proven too much! In this article, we’ve put together some of said coverage for your perusal.

First and perhaps most poignantly, Playstation and Xbox elected to support us by featuring the game’s trailer on their wide-reaching platforms, helping the release to reach a lot of potential new players. Then, there are the sites that cover specific platforms – NintendoEverything, GoNintendo, XboxEra, TheXboxHub, and CompleteXbox – all of whom dedicated an article to our release.

Since our console launch, we have received a lot of love and support from our community, as well as some interesting questions. We have collected the most common ones – along with answers to them – in this post. Hopefully, players looking for something can find it here.

Q: What kind of game is this exactly?

Great news, everyone: Vagrus - the Riven Realms and all of its DLCs are now live on Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PS5! It’s been a long, hard road getting the game into a ready state for consoles, offering the features necessary that allow it to play well on these platforms, but we got there, and we can’t wait for console players to sink their teeth into the experience.

It’s about time we brought to your attention one of the most insane gangs of them all in our new At the Heart of Ruin DLC, who call themselves the Cleansing Conflagration. This band of murderers and pyromaniacs are just as likely to lob fiery projectiles your way as they are to parley, so if you're a vagrus who relies on persuasion to get what you want, you’ll not find these madmen particularly amenable.

This week’s article introduces not just another scalding locale where perilous heat is a given, but it is also held by one of Varnurud’s most determined scavenger gangs, the Hollow Men. Dubbed “the Bastion” by its current occupants, the ruin itself is ancient and of Dwarven origin. Following the Calamity and subsequent catastrophes on the mountain, half of its stone buildings were consumed by lava, yet at least for the time being, the rest of the scorched stone structures remain accessible. There is no telling today what the purpose of the ancient Dwarven settlement was but it had sturdy buildings and tall towers that commanded a large swathe of the area.

When we released Vagrus in October 2021, we could not have imagined that so many would be enthralled by the world of the Riven Realms. Naturally, we have been busy trying to get the game to as many people as possible, but the sheer complexity of the game left us skeptical of the viability of a release on consoles. However, those days are long behind us, and now we are thrilled to announce that Vagrus will be coming to consoles on the 31st of March, 2025 – specifically, to Playstation, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox.

Our aim at Lost Pilgrims is not just to create memorable gaming experiences, but also to introduce you to people who contribute to building our cozy community. Therefore, we have interviewed Ben the Human, who has been streaming Vagrus for a while now and recently arrived at a major milestone by concluding a run with over 250 episodes. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to ask him about his gaming journey and his experience with Vagrus:

After revealing our trailer for ‘At the Heart of Ruin’, our second region DLC, we’re now ready to share a little more about the new realm you will be able to explore. The first area we’ll look at here is Varnurud, which is one of the traversable parts of the great Mountains of Fire. As harsh and unforgiving as it is, most vagri will spend a great deal of their time here, as they navigate searing magma flows and the seemingly endless hordes of madmen who run roughshod over it.