Vagrus: The Riven Realms launched on the Steam store less than a month ago after just over a year in Early Access. A caravan management/RPG/trading simulator set in a crazily dark world that had echos of the old DnD Dark Suns universe, it was just too interesting to pass up... and I bought the game at full price at launch. This promised to be my sort of game!

Developed and published by indie game developer Lost Pilgrims Studio, the game is an example of the sort of independent vision that I like to support. Old school styles of gaming, where hard is hard and challenges are real... none of that hand-holding testosterone fantasies that is delivered to the football players that need that ego boost. No, I'm talking about the games that were written by nerds for nerds... when gaming was a thing that you did in your basement (parent's basement...) or the dark, ill-lit rooms of university colleges whilst everyone else was busy being cool!

It has been about three weeks since I started playing Vagrus: Riven Realms and posted an initial first impressions of the game. Now that I've had a chunk of time getting my teeth into this meaty and unforgiving trading simulator... what do I think?

The Setup

What is the nicest way to say this... you start as the leader (Vagrus) of a desert caravan (Comitatus) that braves the wastes of the Riven Realms. You are simultaneously the heroic lifeblood of commerce between disconnected towns and cities, and the meaningless cannon fodder that falls in the deserts every day. You are essential, and you are a nobody.

So, the game dumps you into the world with a small load of cargo, fighters and slaves and directs you to a small village to the north. After that... nothing, survive or perish! In many ways, it is like Mount and Blade, except so much harsher! None of the locations on the maps are visible... you have to visit places to discover them... or perhaps discover them via text dialogues or rumours. The whole continent is a mystery... and it is all waiting to just swallow you whole!

The Game

When you start the game, you can't dare to venture too far away from a small bunch of easy trade routes. In fact, you often are struggling even to complete these routes whilst balancing caravan pay, morale, supplies and time constraints. This is a game that rewards slow, small and constant wins... large risks pay out in a big way, but only if you survive!

Traversing the game map is done via a series of moves on a network that overlays the map. Each node has the potential for some chance encounter (which might be discovered by scouting, at the cost of movement points) or nothing. Most often, it is nothing... but those encounters can be quite disastrous to the unprepared.

Out in the wilderness, you are balancing speed (with movement points and forced march points) against supplies, pay, morale and exhaustion. You are always close to the brink for supplies (you are in a desert...) which might or might not be made up with successful foraging and hunting... so, do you exhuast your caravan by pushing them harder to reach the destination faster (less supply use and better delivery rewards)? Or do you go a little slower to better balance morale and exhaustion?

Getting in a fight or losing some supplies can drastically change the balance... and you might need to either grind towards the destination with no thought of morale and tiredness, risking mutiny and death, or you might just need to take an extra day or two to recover, risking the loss of more supplies. There rarely is a good choice...

I do wish that there was a greater level of zooming out that was possible on this network map. I would often like to see roughly how far it was to get to the next destination, and the hand-drawn map doesn't really give you much of an idea!

Your Comitatus crew consists of several components that you will need to juggle. Fighters and Outriders for fighting and guarding of the camps, Slaves and workers to forage and to provide labour for the beasts, scouts to scout and hunt, and mounts to carry fighters and goods.

Unlike many other games, you can just max out everything and hope to be okay... more slaves require more fighters, more fighters demand more labour and pay, more mounts demand more fighters and labour... and everyone requires supplies! You can easily get yourself into a horrible resource death spiral if you aren't paying attention.

.. and when you do get a nice balance, it is all thrown out by capturing prisoners, mounts, fatigue, morale and pay modifiers that constantly change depending on your current situation! So, keeping an eye on all of these balances is critical... and sometimes harsh decisions might need to be made.

There are a number of slightly more powerful NPCs that form the Deputies of your caravan. These NPCs are named, and have individual stories and quests (and alignments...), and can be levelled up with skills and perks from your "Insight" (XP equivalent). However, to ascend to higher levels, they need to have some of their individual quests completed. Despite the fact that they are stronger than your regular fighters, they aren't heroic gods... and will be incapacitated as easily as any other, and they can also die, so look after them accordingly!

In addition, they will react to your alignment choices... growing friendlier or more disgruntled and perhaps even abandoning your leadership completely if they disagree too much with you. All of them do have interesting backstories... at the moment, I have one mage who is cursed with hostile demons teleporting into the space near her at regular intervals. She is pretty powerful, but needless to say... the sudden appearance of demons within our caravan leads to other companions not really finding her to be a good choice for inclusion! Still... everyone has their own dark secrets, this just happens to be a little bit more obvious than others!

In addition to being useful or interacting during the text and quest dialogues, the companions can also be attached to key positions such as Guard Captain or Slavedriver in your caravan. This gives your caravan some much needed boosts based on the type of position and the skills of the companion. Really, every little boost is quite welcome here!

So, every town node (and encounter) is lovingly rendered with a hand-drawn picture and lengthy dialogue. I hope that you are into reading, because you will be doing quite a bit of it! This is the legacy of true cRPGs... so, I'm quite happy that it is here! Much of the text is flavour and serves to draw you deeper into the intrigues of the characters that inhabit the world. Some key information is hyperlinked to your journal, which is definitely a useful UI feature (although, a mouseover popup would also be nice!).

There is lots to discover, and even more to find through rumours that you can pick up in the pubs or various shady locations. Not every choice is going to end well, so if you are just randomly clicking every path... well, don't expect the best outcome!

In this case, I reconciled and reunited two lovers! I got away with sneaking the girl out from a fortress where she had married the commandant (under the impression that her true love was dead) and sent them into the unknown with a small gift! I have no idea if they will survive... or if there will be consequences!

Thankfully, there is a relatively decent journal that keeps track of what is going on with active quests. There is so much to learn and discover, nothing is familiar and often you will have to decide between two sides...

Now, it is an odd thing to say... but I find that the trading section of the game to be the least well developed. There is a decent enough economy in the game... but the ability to compare prices in the tool given is pretty clunky. There didn't seem to be any way to quickly calculate profit margins for goods... you can only view the buy-sell price at known markets. The different tool only does the difference between the two "buy" options, which is pretty useless... as I will buy THEN sell! Hopefully, this is a known bug that will be fixed in an update.

What I do like (and what others hate!), is the fact that the prices are only known from the last time that you visited the town (or gathered rumours about the town). After all, it is impossible to know something that you couldn't otherwise know!

There are two forms of combat in Vagrus. Combat is something to be avoided quite strenously... it is quite a big decision to commit to, and you will come out of it battered and exhausted. Not something that you want when you are in the middle of the desert! However, sometimes the choice isn't fully up to you!

The first form of combat is the Companion combat, which happens mostly in quest related battles. This is where your Companion NPCs square off against foes in turn based combat rounds in the manner of Darkest Dungeon or anything of a similar genre. Position is key here... knock enemies out of fighting zones in order to get them to "waste" a turn getting to the right position. Your companions are fragile, and they can easily die here if you aren't prepared or are overmatched.

Thankfully, sometimes you can just participate in full arms combat. This is where you deploy your entire caravan to the fight, and it is most common in the map encounters. You have quite a number of tactical options that you can employ, that will sap your strength in order to provide your caravan with some boosts, and you can choose to arm your slaves/workers/passengers... at a cost! You can even deploy your companions to help sap some of the enemy in heroic combat (dropping to the RPG style combat above), but I found that was more like a guaranteed way to have companions die!

What is better than surviving a battle? Looting the defeated... and you will need to. Each battle takes a lot out of your caravan (manpower, strength and supplies). so you will need to recover at least a bit of it in order to survive to the next oasis or town. In fact, at some point... it might be beneficial to just raid and enslave a small settlement... just to get people and supplies...

Your avatar doesn't really play any direct role in combat and encounters. However, you can level up from the shared Insight (XP) pool to have better outcomes in strategic and map bound skill tests... and also to open up new dialogue options in the text dialogues. Or just to get a little stat boost...

Visuals, Sound and Performance

Vagrus has a pretty but static visual presentation. It is mostly text and spreadsheet based, and so it doesn't really demand much in the way of GPU power. Originally, it was auto-detected to draw upon my dGPU on my gaming laptop... but I quickly switched that to the iGPU and it runs just fine! So, an in depth game that will sip the battery whilst I'm travelling on planes and trains? Perfect! It is partly why I've been playing it so much!

On the sound front, well.. it is nothing to write home about. Music is okay, but forgettable... and the in-game sounds are likewise.

My Thoughts

I have been completely sucked into the world of Vagrus! It has won so many indie design and gameplay awards, and it is clear why. A unique world to play in, a realistic and hardcore trading/caravan simulation with RPG elements. Lots of text reading and choices in the manner of the old cRPGs! This is much of what I would like... I would describe it as the adult version of Mount and Blade!

I love the fact that I'm always so close to falling into oblivion. At one moment, I was flush with money and supplies... and I thought that I had the game beat, but a couple of rash decisions led to over-reach, and I found myself starving with a mutinous crew... days away from a settlement. Slaughtering the horses and some cargo mounts was the only way that I could reach a town... and pushing the caravan until they nearly dropped. I'm rebuilding again from that setback, but I survived... and I've learnt the lesson! Never Let Your Guard Down!

Review Specs

Played at 1080p (144Hz) on:

XMG Fusion 15

CPU: Intel Core i7-9750H
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: SSD (SATA/Nvme)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 2070 Max-Q

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