As we've previously hinted at, parts of the game Vagrus has a narrator in the person of Agos the wanderer. An older man and a vagabond, Agos stumbles upon the player one evening on the road and begins telling stories of his travels (if you let him, that is). One such story is the Prologue that you can play through to be introduced to the world and gameplay at the same time, essentially playing through the story Agos is telling.

In Character design - Part 1 we talked about the types of characters in Vagrus, focusing especially on Companions and their roles in the game. Now it's time to move onto the topic of what exactly goes into the graphic design phase of these characters.

Hey everyone, let's talk combat. So based on the initial feedback and testing of the Companion combat, we have decided to revamp quite a lot of it. The process is still not fully complete, but you can already see the improvement on the images in the post.

It's spring 1990 and I'm in elementary school. My best friend brings a book to school that he reads aloud to a small group of us during our big walks at lunch break. The book has a weird old wizard on the cover conjuring smoke from a crystal ball. More interesting are the illustrations on the inside: intricate black and white drawings of strange fantasy creatures and dungeon locations. The little book is Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson's Warlock of Firetop Mountain, translated to our native language. Most of you probably know that it's a gamebook that you do not read from start to end but in branching numbered chapters that make the story personal and add replayability. Yet they are much more than simple choose-your-own-adventure books because they include a stat and combat system you have to manage throughout the adventure - albeit a really simple one.

Here's another little character art post. This time, there are four combat poses/phases for the Priest of Sergorod.

Time for dynamic character combat poses again!

The Executor of Sergorod is in full swing on these images, courtesy of Szonja. The phases are (from left to right):

• Shattering Blow - and armor point reducing attack.
• Block - the Executor uses his shield to block attacks.
• Smashing Blow - a base attack against a single target.
• Idle - Exector stands idle.

More info on the Executor can be found in an older post: https://vagrus.com/news/character-artwork-executor

More character poses! This time for the good old Brigand - the very first character Szonja designed for the game!

The first image (top) is for Hamstring, an ability which immobilizes the target. The second (bottom left) is for Fend Off, an overwatch-type combat skill where the Brigand targets an empty space on the battlefield. It's bad news for an enemy if they move onto it. The third one (bottom right) is the Brigand's block/defense pose. The brigand is a very versatile support/defensive character for the outlaw roster, able to block spaces and defend other combatants, making him quite a pesky enemy.

Here's a quick look at some of the character poses from combat that Crifta, the mutated archer has. These are (from top left to bottom right): Dodge, Suppressing Shot (skill), Idle, and Downed (when a character is beaten but not yet killed). Szonja put a lot of work into making Crifta look unique and her poses dynamic, and it shows.

As a strategy-RPG hybrid, Vagrus is pretty heavy on UI, so a lot of our effort goes into designing a functional and appealing UI for various elements of the game. Today, we'll take a look at our progress with the 'main UI', which is on the campaign map. This is what the player will see the most of and it's UI has to be a gateway to several key game elements.

The Calamity burned down the great forests, tranquil glades, and neat hedges of the region that is now the Searing Plains. A part of it, what is today called Smolderbone Flats, used to be a series of large lakes and islands surrounded by these forests. During the cataclysm, the lakes became sour and salty in a matter of hours and everything in them died. Today even the traces of them are gone. What remains is a barren, infertile, salty flatland that is only inhabited by weird monsters that thrive in such environments: salamanders, fire lizards, even fiery elemental creatures.