Interview: What’s next for city-builder Pioneers of Pagonia?

A chat with Envision Entertainment’s Volker Wertich

Envision Entertainment

German indie studio Envision Entertainment landed a critical hit with Pioneers of Pagonia, its zen city-builder inspired by the likes of The Settlers, when it launched into Early Access in December 2023. Pioneers of Pagonia sold 100,000 copies in a single week and has been getting updates in regular intervals since then, adding new content, features, and quality-of-life improvements.

I had the chance to sit down with Volker Wertich, the original creator of The Settlers and the man leading Envision, at Gamescom 2024 to speak about Pioneers of Pagonia’s progress and what’s next for the title.

Wertich gives me all the juicy details on the Magic Update, which is planned for November 2024 and will be the final item on the current Early Access roadmap – but there’s no need for fans to freak out, because an entirely new roadmap will be released afterward and development will be continuing.

“We will have meetings in September and October,” Wertich says, “where we will discuss what the next roadmap will be exactly. Of course we have some ideas of what we want to do, but no decisions have been made yet. We have a lot of plans and the whole team will continue to work on this game.”

It’s clear that Wertich has a certain direction in mind, though. “We’ve added a lot of buildings and commodities to the game, so we will probably not add that many more. So we can at least say we will do other stuff,” he tells me with a mischievous grin.

I mention that, personally, I’d love to see some different factions in the game to offer slightly more variety in gameplay, as that’s one of the aspects I’ve always loved about The Settlers, and to my surprise Wertich doesn’t outright reject the possibility: “That’s one of the big options. Of course, our faction is really big, so adding another faction wouldn’t be that easy. But we also have some ideas around this topic.”

I threw the possibility of settling several islands and having water-based logistics out there, too, so I did my best to influence those September and October meetings for the next roadmap, my fellow Pagonians.

As for the imminent future, the Envision boss could obviously provide me with a lot more concrete information – and I have to say, the Magic Update is poised to really add some complexity to the game. A lot of this is down to the addition of new enemy types and ways to counter them.

The Cursed will spread their foul influence throughout the island, forcibly transforming nature into a hostile environment for your settlers. They put a little bit of time pressure on you, since they’ll open additional portals to allow more of their brethren to roam this world the longer you delay dealing with them. What’s more, there are different sub-factions of Cursed, which all plague you in their own special ways. The Malthorn, for example, spread their corrupt influence through the forests of an island, making them unworkable. The other two sub-factions will be tied to water and the mountains.

The Malthorn befoul an island's forests. / Envision Entertainment

To counter them, players will need to train specific units, such as warlocks and sorcerers. Which brings us to the new resources in this update: several types of gems. All of these have their own place in your military-industrial complex, being required by different unit types in the new Arcane Academy, though you can also forge magic equipment for existing troop types. You can also use gems in the production of jewelry, which can add to the wealth of your settlement and increase the combat effectiveness of your army.

As Wertich shows me all the available options for equipment craftable with these gems, I’m a bit reminded of Dwarf Fortress – Pioneers of Pagonia is approaching a similar level of variety in a few regards, which is exciting to see. “Ideally, we have two or three uses for every commodity,” he says. 

Gem Mines produce the valuable resource needed to resist the Cursed. / Envision Entertainment

Another addition in the Magic Update is the Treasure Hunter, a unit that does exactly what its name suggests. Maps will feature points of interest such as ruins in the new version, at which you can dig for treasure – these come in the form of valuables, weapons caches, or forgotten supply depots. You can also find or trade for treasure maps, which show additional dig sites. Once you’ve identified a potential treasure location, you’ll simply need to pin down the exact treasure site with a little bit of fine-tuning. “You’ll get information on how often they find stuff,” Wertich explains. “It’s a small puzzle.”

For customization purposes, such treasure sites count as subsurface resources like ores – so you can adjust how lucrative digging is by changing those settings pre-game.

That's a promising golden glow from this Treasure Hunter's dig site. / Envision Entertainment

The Magic Update has some new tutorials and notifications in store as well to help the players with onboarding and provide them with more information on the state of their settlement.

For Volker Wertich, Early Access has been a really “exciting way to continue to develop a game, because we are getting so much feedback and information about what people like and don’t like or where they think there is room for improvement.”

He lauds the game’s fan base for being so constructive and good about communication and the developer seems genuinely happy that players are so excited about what his team is creating. “There are some [players] who are really waiting for the exact release [of an update] and are then posting the first screenshots a few minutes later,” he describes.

Pioneers of Pagonia is available on PC via Steam and will continue to receive regular updates for free on the road towards version 1.0.