Another day, another step closer to At the Heart of Ruin’s release date, October 22. And of course, another teaser. Today’s fare showcases largely avoided territory deep beneath the ruined Dwarven city of Dum Garok. It is a territory where few tread and from which even fewer return.
Today’s location teaser is none other than the dark chasm of the Wound, a terrible place where travelers dare not go, and oft-times where nightmares are made manifest. True to its name, the gouge in the land glows with a conspicuous crimson light and its walls appear covered in blood or viscera. Travelers who have surveyed its length say it is more than fifteen miles long, the plunging chasm within its confines ranging between one hundred and two hundred yards in depth.
The teaser this week is somewhat of a continuation of an earlier post, where we brought the Earth Elemental to you, explaining that a key aspect of its design included not just anger, but a range of human emotions felt and experienced by the cursed, suffering spirits that manifest them.
In many ways, the Fire Elemental is no different. Similarly, it is a host to restless spirits, yet in contrast, that spirit is perhaps more enraged than broken. The diverse denizens of Varnurud testify that the two elementals are different in that their anger is represented in disparate ways; the Earth Elemental holds a deep grudge and sadness, while the Fire Elemental manifests a furious rage.
Hey everyone,
As you may have noticed, this last month was exceptionally busy for us on the virtual storefronts, especially on Steam, where Vagrus was featured in the Daily Deal program on May 30 (at a staggering 50% discount, the lowest price as of yet), then took part in the annual TurnBasedThursdayFest between June 2 and 9 (with a similarly attractive discount). The festival received a “featured” spot on the platform, which was a fantastic milestone for everyone involved.
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”.
This week we’re coming to you with another teaser, this time of the elemental variety. As you might know, the elements, specifically fire and earth, are closely tied to our At the Heart of Ruin expansion, and the proliferation of elementals that personify these elements comes about largely because of the spirits of these lands, destined to suffer and be consumed by rage. This is the sad legacy of the Calamity.
It’s no secret that At the Heart of Ruin, our upcoming expansion, features a veritable cornucopia of scorching locales. Death by exhaustion, flame, or combustion is likely to be a frequent occurrence. Yet perhaps more than any location above ground, the subterranean depths of Dvendar Tharr are the worst; rivers of lava cut through rock, frequently blocking the way, making exploration a tenuous and perilous notion.
Fellow vagri,
2024 is coming to its inevitable end and so we are closing the books on this year’s adventures as well. For this occasion, we thought we’d look back on the past year and list some of the things that happened around Vagrus before signing off.
We kicked off 2024 with a post about our plans for the year. In retrospect, wanting to release smaller bits of content at intervals while developing two very content-heavy DLCs with our tiny writing team was wishful thinking. Why it did not exactly pan out like that also involved a lot of other factors, like the many, many other aspects of the game we’ve worked hard to improve. Also, it seems that there’s no such thing as “smaller bits of content” when it comes to Vagrus. With millions of words worth of written content behind us, everything is interconnected and adding things can be very tricky. Also, players now expect meaty additions, so just any odd small story just won’t cut it. Still, this effort gave us Clandestine, so it was not in vain.
The team of Lost Pilgrims was honored to be invited to present at the “16. Szegedi Képregényfesztivál” (the 16th Comic Festival in the town of Szeged, Hungary), an annual con of mostly graphic novels and comic books, but also many other things geeky. And so Gábor and Geri set out and traveled from Budapest to Szeged where things were about to get nerdy.
This week’s post covers the creation of our painted Campaign Map and the interactive Chart, starting from their humblest beginnings in our creative director’s tabletop role-playing game materials to their eventual manifestation in-game, covered by a node grid and expanded with interactive options.
To kick it off, let’s start by taking a look at how it all began for Vagrus.