HomeFeaturesVagrus - The Riven Realms
The best games you missed in 2021: Vagrus - The Riven RealmsMargin orders
Margin orders
Vagrus: The Riven Realms - Official Launch TrailerWatch on YouTube
Vagrus: The Riven Realms - Official Launch Trailer
It’s not as grimdark as it seems. Most people I’ve met have been pretty sound, a welcome change from interpreting “difficult” as “everyone is a hostile prick for no reason”. The stock fantasy races are here but rarely remarked upon, with even the dragon people treated more like a neighbouring kingdom than fundamentally Other. As a roving trader you’re unremarkable, neither downtrodden nor particularly influential, and will mostly travel between settlements in an open world, doing the old low/high biz. There’s no main plot as such, just several smaller stories you might pursue. This is unexpected given the atmosphere and detail written into the world, but it works in its favour. You discover characters and areas and hidden bits because you’re living and dealing in that world, not because the plot requires it. It’s more of your own little story, even if it’s a humble and everyday one.
Vagrus is an unusual game despite sounding like a lot of other things. It’s not the standard open worldElitederivative, nor a typical RPG or choose your own adventure game. It’s about escorting some guys who are looking for work not as a mission but because you’re the next caravan going that way. It’s about keeping everyone’s spirits up so they’ll forgive you for not paying wages until you get to the waystation. About splashing out on an inn because your people have had a rough week. All that could work in a pure, dry sim, but doing it in a rich and original world whose rules you’ll learn over time makes the small successes and the ups and downs of the road feel more significant. And if the worst happens, it actually has a proper save system. Let’s hope 2022 finally brings an end to the idea that “saving the game like it’s not still 1982” is something worthy of note.
