Hey everyone,
we wanted to provide an update on Vagrus as we come close to releasing the first Open World build. We've been talking about it for a long time now, we know, but we hope you will appreciate the ambition of this small team, along with all the effort and heart poured into the game when you get your hands on it.
There were a number of project milestones that we managed to unlock recently over at fig. Some of these are quite big and we are very excited to be able to work on them as they make the game better and deeper by what they bring to the table. Let's take a quick look at what is being developed currently:
One of the last big additions to Vagrus' Open World Campaign that is now coming very close to being released is the character creation sequence at the start of the game. That is the feature that allows you to customize and set up your own vagrus by selecting a variety of options in subsequent steps. To give a quick idea of the many amazing options, here's a little rundown:
One of the great benefits of our successful crowdfunding campaign is being able to expand on parts of the game we felt we were unsatisfied with. One such area was Sound Effects, which was largely (but not exclusively) populated by placeholders up till recently.
Your chart is one of your most important tools in Vagrus, and we keep adding to and expanding on it with subsequent builds. Milestone 10 unlocked what we referred to as 'chart exploration', which really means that from now on, Rumors, Passengers, and Codex entries you gain of locations also reveal them on your Chart, adding a whole new depth to hunting for information.
The have been or will be game design posts about all but one: narration so let's focus on that for a second.
New Content: Extended Narration
It has taken much longer than expected to reach Charles - the voice of Agos the Wanderer - due to some personal matters as well as his change of career. We are happy to share that now we have all the narration recorded for Agos through-out Pilgrims of the Wasteland, and even for the beginning of the main game as he leaves your comitatus after sharing his story. We plan to make a few minor sound editing changes to these new recordings but wanted to delay this build no further, so we will do that in a subsequent iteration only. When playing the PotW story, it gives so much to it already that we think you will like this a lot. Also, here's a shout-out for Charles' new focus as he instructs singers on how to become more confident. Check out and sign up to support his Patreon page if you are interested.
As the new Trading system was shaping up for Milestone 5 alongside the emergence in our storylines of some of the less lawful factions (such as the Loader's Guild), we figured we would need a sub-system for smuggling goods as it makes sense that these organizations would be willing to hire a vagrus to do just that.
Laurels All Around
In our endeavour to get Vagrus into the sights of as many cRPG lovers as we can, we applied for featured spots in a number of nearby game shows - successfully! Not only did we get invited to present Vagrus the game itself but our art design and developer pitch has been rewarded as well making it into the official selection of said shows (see above). That reminds us to bring to your attention the upcoming opportunities to meet us in person:
As I am writing these lines, we are actively working on what we call Enduring Effects for the game. What are these? Well, in short and to put it simply, these are all buffs and debuffs that last for several in-game days or are permanent (until removed somehow). They come in a variety of types and can be used for a lot of things to enhance gameplay and narrative alike.
#enduringeffects #gamedesign #openworld #projectupdate #unity