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.

The 3rd of September was a big day for fans of the interactive Fighting Fantasy gamebooks that have brought countless hours of entertainment to so many of us since the 1980s. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the publication of the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the fourth Fighting Fantasy Fest was held in London. Visitors of the Fest could meet legends like Steve Jackson and Sir Ian Livingstone in person, along with many other prominent gamebook writers like Rhianna Pratchett, Jonathan Green, or Marc Gascoigne, as well as many graphic artists of the book series. We could have our books signed, pick up a bunch of merchandise, mingle with other fans, and watch presentations on various, exciting topics. It was indeed great fun!

We are happy to report that after a long, drawn-out battle with boxes, wrappers, and the employees of the postal services, we managed to send out all the physical rewards we could. All that remains are a handful of rewards where some information is missing (we did not receive a name or an address from the customer) or that wasn't picked up. But the vast majority of the rewards are on their way - if not at their destinations already.

The artbook of Vagrus is finally here (well, technically it is also on its way to everyone who ordered it) and holding it in our hands is indeed fantastic.

Admittedly, putting the book together was quite rough. Some of us thought that pulling it together from already existing artwork and writing texts around the art is going to take a couple of weeks. Turns out, compiling and writing something this big for physical publishing takes a handful of months, more like. All this in spite of doing a sort of a dry run previously with the smaller (A5) art booklet that went into the Collectors' Editions, albeit that had no texts accompanying the images. 

Hey Everyone,

it's happening! We have all the parts for the Collector's Edition of Vagrus delivered, so we started putting together the packages. Here's a picture with the two types of Vagrus tees beside what goes into Collector's Edition boxes.

Hey everyone,

Merch Shipped Soon

Despite all the hurdles (production issues, massive paper shortage, etc.) our Vagrus-related merchandise is in the last stages of production. Shipping will start as soon as we receive the finalized items from the printing factories. We are sorry about the delays, it has been a difficult road to get here.

Hey everyone,

the last few weeks have been slow. Most of our team is either on sick leave or vacation, while the rest of us have been trying to finish tasks related to our physical Vagrus products or were busy formulating plans for the future of Lost Pilgrims. Bear with us though, as we are getting closer to realizing these plans. For now, let us look at what we are working on in more detail.

We've reached a point in the design of the physical rewards of our crowdfunding campaign and related merchandise that we decided to reveal what these items will look like. This includes a cloth chart, two kinds of T-shirts, and the two physical editions (Collector's and Emperor's Editions - more on their contents in a future post).

'You have taken our herd-brother captive, two-legs. Now you either trade him back to us or face the wrath of my tribe. I would think twice before you answer. When irked, we are not unlike Kal-dai-Ruhk, Great Spirit of the Eternal Wastes, when he summons his calamitous gales to wipe away whole cities.'

- The Kal-rish traveling merchant Ku-ro-Rath bargaining for his kin's life with a soon-to-be destroyed outpost's magistrate

'We don't do alms 'ere, mate.'

- The "honest merchant" Narbo, talking about Scrapheap

The junk pile town of Scrapheap is one of the first locales you can visit in 'Pilgrims of the Wasteland', the standalone narrative scenario of Vagrus, and its location artwork was one of the first to be painted. Bazsó Lossonczy, the artist behind this amazing piece, captured the brooding, oppressive, desolate atmosphere of this town of scavengers in the sweltering shadow of the constantly volcanic mountains.