Ex-Disco Elysium developers have announced two brand new studios and two spiritual successors to the influential RPG within just a day or so of each other. Feel free to make your own “weird that it happened twice” joke here.
The first new studio to make its announcement (in our running order, not necessarily chronologically) is Dark Math Games, which describes itself as a “breakaway group from the original development team of Disco Elysium“.
The team is based in the UK and boasts a staff of 20, “about half of whom contributed to bringing the critically acclaimed hit Disco Elysium…to life”, according to a press release.
Dark Math’s debut game is XXX Nightshift, a slightly questionably-named narrative RPG in which you are “stranded at a luxury ski resort in Antarctica”.
As you play, you’ll experience “deep single-player role-playing”, complete with an “innovative and powerful role-playing system” that “respects your time and trusts your intelligence with seismic choices”. Sounds pretty Disco Elysium-esque, alright.
Somewhat cheekily, Dark Math also promises XXX Nightshift will bring “a few less words” and “a few more bullets” to the RPG table, resulting in a “lot more fun”. It’s probably fair to say there was a lot of reading involved in enjoying Disco Elysium.
XXX Nightshift doesn’t have a release date or window yet, but you can wishlist it on Steam here if you want to follow along with its progress.
Next up on the Disco Elysium spiritual successor conveyor belt is Longdue, a new studio that boasts a dozen staff members “including team members that worked on the original Disco Elysium and its unreleased sequel”.
Longdue is also pulling in talent from the likes of Bungie and Rockstar for its debut title, which it describes as a “psychological RPG” which “explores the delicate interplay between the conscious and subconscious”.
Unlike Dark Math’s game, Longdue’s debut project doesn’t have a name yet, but you can keep an eye on its progress by heading over to the studio’s new official website.
In total, this makes four companies arguably vying for the legacy of Disco Elysium. As well as the two studios above, there’s also Red Info, a studio supposedly founded by ex-Disco Elysium leads Robert Kurvitz and Aleksander Rostov, although we haven’t heard much about that studio for a while.
Of course, original Disco Elysium developer ZA/UM is also technically still a going concern, although it did cancel a project and lay off some of its staff earlier this year. Which of these studios will emerge victorious in the battle for Disco Elysium‘s soul? We shall have to wait and see.