Like most years, 2025 has been a year of ups and downs, but certainly at Lost Pilgrims, it’s been a satisfying year full of releases and interactions with our community. We’re happy to put the year behind us and welcome 2026, but today we’re going to do a bit of a retrospective on the past 12 months or so. If that sounds like your bag, stick around. We’re going topic by topic, and there’s a lot to talk about!

We bring you today’s post for one reason and reason alone: to wish all of you very Happy Holidays! As we look back on another productive year with our latest expansion release in  At the Heart of Ruin, we’re all relieved to say that now it is time for a little rest and relaxation. There are exciting things ahead for all at the studio, but we shall have to let those lie dormant – at least for now.

Hey everyone,

This update brings with it the machine translated texts for the entirety of At the Heart of Ruin at last! Thanks to all of you for your patience – we know this took a bit long, but it proved trickier to implement than we had anticipated. Hopefully, now those of you who’ve been waiting for it can enjoy the expansion, too.

Since At the Heart of Ruin’s release, we’ve been honored to receive press from a variety of outlets, on YouTube, and be promoted by fellow developers who are kind enough to give the expansion a shout-out.

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’s location showcase for our At the Heart of Ruin expansion reveals the Ember Mines, a highly contested site that once belonged to the Dwarves of Dvendar Tharr, but has recently become a den for the numerous scavenger gangs that plague Varnurud. Whether it's sacrificial burnings or the enjoyment of human flesh, these savages are hardly the kind you’d be happy to encounter in the Ember Mines’ depths. No wonder that few go near the site – to do so is to invite death – though the resources within are said to be plenty, and there is talk of far more down the shaft than mere scrap.

Vagrus’s At the Heart of Ruin expansion introduces many new enemies – both bestial and humanoid – and this week we’re happy to bring you one particular favorite: the Charred Shambler. These scorching Undead can be found almost anywhere in the confines of old Dvendar Tharr. When the Calamity tore the Mountains of Fire asunder, Dwarves perished by the thousands, a lot of them warriors. Later, the twisted magic that bore down on these lands reanimated their remains so that those would walk the world again and lash out toward the living. Charred Shamblers are thus destined to roam the mountains, taking their rage out on any who chance their domain. To call them predatory would be an understatement.

Excitement builds steadily as Vagrus's console release draws closer, and at the studio, the mood is elated. We cannot wait to introduce the game to an entirely new segment of the player base, which, according to the feedback we’ve received thus far, can hardly wait for the release. Thus, as we march onward to the 31st of March release date (for Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PS5), we thought it’d be fitting to share some of the features that we think make the game play well on consoles. It’s certainly not your typical console release, though, if not for anything else, then for the mix of genres that is Vagrus.

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.

How It Started

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.

With an eventful year drawing to a satisfying close, we here at Lost Pilgrims would like to wish you all Happy Holidays! We hope you have a chance to take a break from whatever it is you do, get some rest, and, of course, spend some time with your family or loved ones. With our latest region DLC, At the Heart of Ruin, deep in development as well as other projects in their early beginnings, next year is set to be an explosive one at Lost Pilgrims – for now, however, we must rest, too.