So the big news is that the game's title is finalized at last! For now. :D

Check out the title reveal short video!

The word vagrus is the same pseudo-Latin that most of the Imperial Tongue used in the game (as it hearkens back to the Roman Empire in material and immaterial culture). It meant 'wanderer' or 'vagabond' in Imperial, but nowadays it only refers to the men and women who lead a comitatus across the wasteland. It is short, easy to remember, and easy to be associated to the English word 'vagrant' (which also originates in Latin).

We are happy to report that last month we made a lot of progress on the combat of Vagrus. Thus, we thought to give you a sneak peek.

In the short video, where Crifta and her goons take on the player characters, you can see a new combat background and several characters that are now fully operational in combat. Projectile mechanics also work now in combat, for the most part (as you can see when Crifta fires her deadly bow). The UI has been improved a lot as well, including the addition of the UI segment of the vagrus itself (top left corner). Here, players will be able to boost their characters in a number of ways spending Resourcefulness. Often, spending it is the only way to prevail in tough situations.

After the Dragon Lords arrived and descended upon the broken continent in the wake of the Calamity, they settled down in the middle of the landmass and cast their ancient magic on an area large enough to comfortably sustain their nests and broods. The magical energies crushed the plains and physically elevated the region, molding it into spacious highlands and great mountain ranges, as well as carrying up earth and ore from deeper below, thereby banishing the fallout of the Calamity, making this land fertile once again. Thus, the Dragonlands were born.

Avernum is the most important city in the Northern Searing Plains. The reborn Empire moved back to the scorched and abandoned region soon after the Calamity and found it ideal to settle because of the new resources that can be found in the vicinity: salt, rare minerals, and even obsidian. Thus, Avernum was built at the center of the Smolderbone Flats. The city mostly lacks the religious apparatus of large provincial settlements, but has a fairly large military presence there under the direct control of the Prefectus, its governor. Rumor is that due to its backwater status, the city of Avernum follows Imperial regulations more loosely, and it has become essentially the private kingdom of the reigning Prefectus.

As we promised few weeks back, we have put a significant effort into improving our hero combat and we are now happy to present you, dear patrons, an update on how far we've got.

Most importantly, we created a new UI and removed the placeholder at the bottom of the screen.

We have also added new characters and skills that they can use. Like in the second example, Sedarias strikes two Charred corpses at once with his Cleave skill.

We are extremely proud and happy to announce that our core team grew with a brilliant graphic designer, Szonja. We have been looking for a character artist for quite some time to ramp up our progress on that front and Szonja proved herself to be the best fit by miles with her unique style and open-mindedness.

Her main task is to bring our hero and enemy characters to life and help us with shaping the user interface as we enter Pre-Alpha stage with more parts of the game added each day.

We have a marvelous journey ahead and could not imagine any better traveling companion than Szonja. Welcome aboard!

Here's a second look of how the comitatus (caravan) led by the vagrus (the player) moves on the world map. It is still pretty early stuff, a lot can and will change, but it should give a good idea of how things will work. A few thoughts on the movement mechanics that might further clarify what you can see in the video:

Sedarias posed mightily on the Patreon high-resolution wallpaper reward back in January 2018. Now it is time unveil him to the public. Enjoy!

Meet Sedarias, one of the characters who can join your travelling company in the game. He is an Imperial human serving the Ordis Negras Solis (the Order of the Black Sun). Sedarias was knighted after a period of squire service under an infamous knight Konarius. Knights of the Black Sun worship Sergorod, God of Malevolence and Vengeance, and Ahskul, God of Death. The Order itself was created to bring the two clergies of these competing new gods closer in cooperation for the good of the Empire. Having been around for over 600 years, Ordis Negras Solis is the first and most powerful of the Imperial knightly orders. Its members are picked from the best soldiers, nobles, and warriors of the Empire.

Well, we have been so busy that we skipped a beat in our originally planned monthly project updates. Which is actually good news if we are looking at it from a progress perspective. So what has happened since last year?

After returning recharged (and pot-bellied) from the holiday period we focused our attention on two things: 

• Creating additional graphic design capacity by finding more super-talented and like-minded artists to create environment and character art assets for us.
• Prototyping our hero combat to test its mechanics both in terms of graphics and game design.

The obvious intent behind choosing those focus areas was that we wanted to show more to our follower community on how the game is going to look like as well as display some of the game mechanics we're planning on using.

From the very first moment in art design and development for Vagrus, we knew that the game world's haunting, post-apocalyptic beauty is key to conveying the atmosphere we want to create. Of course, that may not be saying much, since most games today rely heavily on visuals, it comes with the genre. More specifically, the challenge was to convey the right kind of atmosphere and find the art style that is perfect for that. We agreed soon that cartoon-like or pixel art would not do, nor would any other more stylized imagery. We settled upon the more realistic, but painting-like look, which gives a feeling almost akin to observing an old and faded piece of classical art. The other challenge was that the world of Vagrus has been a living and detailed environment for a long time now, so often our fantastically talented artists have to follow very specific directions on certain elements of an image.