'They say that the tower was so tall that its pinnacle scraped the heavens. These days, though, only about two hundred feet of stained marble poke out from under the endless dunes of Arenas Vorax. What happened to the rest of the tower? Heh. They say that you can enter through a window and go down the steps, deeper and deeper under the sands, deeper and deeper until you reach the other side of the world. They also say that things lurk down there and skitter endlessly in the black abyss. But they say many things...'

We decided to revitalize an older series of posts that detailed companion skills and displayed some poses for these characters. This time we will take a look at the Dark Elf scout Renkailon in all his grim glory.

First and foremost, Ren was designed as a ranged-melee hybrid character with some really useful support capabilities. His damaging attacks are all Armor Piercing, which helps against armored foes quite a bit. Though Ren is not very sturdy, his high Evade stat allows him to avoid damage effectively.

We are proud to announce that Vagrus is coming to Fig in April 2019!

Our campaign is going to follow Fig's new Open Access model which shakes up the rather stale indie game crowdfunding scene by combining an open-ended campaign structure with offering supporters early involvement in development. Sounds like Early Access? Yes, it does have similarities but there are major differences:

In the last part of the Combat Guide we took a look at Companion Actions, including moving, Skills, and their combinations. This time, we'll delve into defensive stats and their importance.

'They may be called the 'Children of the Calamity' but make no mistake, dominus. These terrible creatures are far from being child-like. When you see one, do not hesitate; they won't.'

Another non-human character joins our cast, this time a Dwarf! Dwarves are typically lonely, cranky, calculating fellows in the Riven Realms. Their homeland was utterly decimated in the Calamity and has remained uninhabitable ever since. All the magnificent achievements, inventions, and treasures of the mighty Dwarven kingdom went up in flames when it was engulfed in a volcanic cataclysm. And because the volcanoes are still very much active, there is little hope of reclaiming anything from the ruins. Most Dwarves were killed during the Calamity and today, only several thousand remain. For all intents and purposes, they are a dead race.

The TIME is approaching! We are opening up our Prologue Alpha testing soon, folks!

   - So I can just apply & play the demo before everyone?
   - Well, you get to see the game early but you actually have to test & report bugs. 
   - OK! When?
   - When we get to 1k+ followers on Game Jolt. So go and share this!

In the last part of our character design series, we talked about what goes into conceptualizing and designing characters and touched upon how Bazsó came up with distinct the art style for characters and how Szonja raised the bar when working with the majority of them.

Now it's time to discuss what actually happens after the initial phase of concepts and moodboards. Mind you, this will probably have information that is well-known by any graphic designers who work on 2D character art; yet others may find it intriguing.

Vagrus - The Riven Realms is a game rich in storylines and quests, and most of these appear in the form of what we call Events: text based interactions where your choices guide the story. There are a lot (and I mean a LOT) of these Events and due to their nature, writing for the game involves quite complex scripting and a non-linear narrative design angle. But what does this mean in practice and what does it involve?

Time for another project update! Seventy-seven days have passed by and even though it was summer - supposedly calmer times - it felt pretty frantic. In the good sense.

A huge Thank You! and wishing all the best to Marci

As your might remember, our previous post started with the news of Marci joining the team to complete his summer internship with us for his degree in software development. Marci has been instrumental to the progress we made on the Codex & Journal functionality and UI, as well as to catching up on our design documents. Now that he has returned to his studies, we wish him all the very best for his goal of finishing his Bachelor's degree. We're pleased to see that he is on the right track to become a great game developer!