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 we’re coming to you with another teaser, this time of the elemental variety. As you might know, the elements, specifically fire and earth, are closely tied to our At the Heart of Ruin expansion, and the proliferation of elementals that personify these elements comes about largely because of the spirits of these lands, destined to suffer and be consumed by rage. This is the sad legacy of the Calamity.

This week, we’re revealing something that we hope you’ll never have to visit in game: the village the Cleansing Conflagration – the gang of pyromaniacal, murderous scavengers – call home. Though it may not look much, it is a place of terror, sacrifice, and depravity, where there are artifacts and effigies aplenty to remind you of what goes on here.

Lost Pilgrims is celebrating the beginning of summer with a bunch of amazing discounts, so if you’ve been eyeing Vagrus or its DLCs for a while, check it out on the following platforms:

Playstation Store: May 21 - June 4

Today we have another teaser for you in the form of character art – an essential component of our upcoming At the Heart of Ruin expansion, where many new humanoids, beasts, creatures, and anomalies are set to be introduced. And yet, this one is hardly ostentatious; it does not aim to dazzle or inspire fear, but simply to show you one of the various factions of authority that exist in Scrapheap, the focal point of many coming adventures.

Hey everyone,

While work on the upcoming DLC (or rather, expansion: At the Heart of Ruin) is ongoing, the team at Lost Pilgrims is also busy fixing bugs and adding performance improvements. This patch includes several of both, with some added love to controller support. We’ve also thoroughly optimized our asset handling, freeing up a whopping 1.5 Gigabytes of hard drive space.

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.

In the northwestern reaches of Varnurud, a monument to Dwarven splendor rises from a stone platform, a vestige of ruined Dvendar Tharr – its immense size and state of preservation are testaments to the craftsmanship and skillful architecture of the ancient Dwarves of the faded kingdom.

Though none who dwell in these forsaken lands now know its origin, some theorize that the statue was erected to honor a thane or king whose name was lost to time in the millennium since the Calamity. As for its name, “the Hollow King”, it is unknown if it is a metaphor for the king that once was or simply a descriptor; indeed, its interior has been hollowed out and the cavernous gullets that bore inside the mountain from its base share the characterization.

Since Vagrus’s console release on the 31st of March, life at the studio has been hectic. We’ve been fixing bugs and trying to keep up with the deluge of coverage on offer. It’s almost proven too much! In this article, we’ve put together some of said coverage for your perusal.

First and perhaps most poignantly, Playstation and Xbox elected to support us by featuring the game’s trailer on their wide-reaching platforms, helping the release to reach a lot of potential new players. Then, there are the sites that cover specific platforms – NintendoEverything, GoNintendo, XboxEra, TheXboxHub, and CompleteXbox – all of whom dedicated an article to our release.

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.