We are absolutely stoked to announce that our expansion, At the Heart of Ruin, is finally OUT! As usual for us, the project’s scope was vast, and after putting as much as we could into it, be they stories, features, locations, factions, artwork, enemies, or rewards, we’re proud of what we’ve achieved and excited to see what you make of it!

In the leadup to the release of At the Heart of Ruin on the 22nd of October (accompanied by the Ruinous Supporter Pack), we’ve already talked about new mechanics and features, like the updated throw-out or Exploration Encounters, but we thought it’s also time to touch upon the narrative and graphic art side of things.

After over a year of development, the time has finally come to reveal the release date of our most ambitious DLC as of yet: At the Heart of Ruin will arrive on the 22nd of October! Alongside the expansion, our Ruinous Supporter Pack will also be up for grabs from the same day.

As the day’s heat settles over the deserts and arid wastelands of Xeryn, travel becomes even more treacherous. In Vagrus, several game systems represent or contextualize this – Vigor loss, Movement Point costs (that include difficulty from “climate”), and even Events that deal with the hardships or challenges presented by scorching weather. In our upcoming At the Heart of Ruin expansion, the heat will be turned up even more. The Mountains of Fire might not be beaten by the cruel sun all day due to the blanket of ash obscuring the skies, but volcanic activities take care of raising temperatures to even greater extremes.

Hey everyone,

As you may have noticed, this last month was exceptionally busy for us on the virtual storefronts, especially on Steam, where Vagrus was featured in the Daily Deal program on May 30 (at a staggering 50% discount, the lowest price as of yet), then took part in the annual TurnBasedThursdayFest between June 2 and 9 (with a similarly attractive discount). The festival received a “featured” spot on the platform, which was a fantastic milestone for everyone involved.

Hey everyone,

We return to you with another round of updates, this time the focus being on performance improvements and save game files. Controllers received some love as well, fixing inconsistencies, updating UI, and squashing bugs that pertained to them specifically. We also reworked the Extras Menu due to requirements on certain other platforms, though admittedly, its functions are much better now, allowing you to listen to tracks of the OST there and check out other extra content you own.

This week’s article introduces not just another scalding locale where perilous heat is a given, but it is also held by one of Varnurud’s most determined scavenger gangs, the Hollow Men. Dubbed “the Bastion” by its current occupants, the ruin itself is ancient and of Dwarven origin. Following the Calamity and subsequent catastrophes on the mountain, half of its stone buildings were consumed by lava, yet at least for the time being, the rest of the scorched stone structures remain accessible. There is no telling today what the purpose of the ancient Dwarven settlement was but it had sturdy buildings and tall towers that commanded a large swathe of the area.

Fellow vagri,

2024 is coming to its inevitable end and so we are closing the books on this year’s adventures as well. For this occasion, we thought we’d look back on the past year and list some of the things that happened around Vagrus before signing off.

How It Started

We kicked off 2024 with a post about our plans for the year. In retrospect, wanting to release smaller bits of content at intervals while developing two very content-heavy DLCs with our tiny writing team was wishful thinking. Why it did not exactly pan out like that also involved a lot of other factors, like the many, many other aspects of the game we’ve worked hard to improve. Also, it seems that there’s no such thing as “smaller bits of content” when it comes to Vagrus. With millions of words worth of written content behind us, everything is interconnected and adding things can be very tricky. Also, players now expect meaty additions, so just any odd small story just won’t cut it. Still, this effort gave us Clandestine, so it was not in vain.

As we’ve alluded to in recent posts, the recent release of Old Acquaintances has set the creative part of the team into action on our next DLC, but what have our programmers, UI, and quality assurance people been up to?

Why, improving the game, of course. This is why we’re happy to present some impactful quality of life (QoL) changes that will help make your Vagrus experience all the smoother.

In today’s article, we’ll do our very best to explain how and why we arrived at the conclusion to remove the in-game campaign time limit from Vagrus, and also go into detail about what this entails, especially regarding achievements. We feel that this is necessary because the system has been with us since the release of Vagrus back in 2020 and our players have always had a diverse view on it existing in the first place. So buckle up, time is of the essence!