Nearly five years since the game launched, Disco Elysium has something of a rotten legacy. One of the most acclaimed games of the modern era, the ground-breaking RPG was adored by critics and consumers alike at launch, lauded for its deep RPG systems, its exemplary writing, and for how completely and utterly well-conceived its bleak, miserable world was. I also really, really liked the music.

Tensions between development staff and the publishing arm of the company, and apparently rancid in-studio vibes, have lead to many of us thinking that we’ll never get another game like Disco Elysium ever again. Or will we?

Though it’s missing some key staff that made DE as memorable as it was, new indie developer Longdue has announced that it’s working on something very Disco-like – and it even has a number of staff that worked on the original on its books (but not, notably, the three ‘main’ leads: Robert Kurvitz, Aleksander Rostov, and Helen Hindpere).

The studio is already ‘a dozen strong’, per a press release, ‘including team members that worked on the original Disco Elysium and its unreleased sequel’. The team is also drawing talent from across the industry, including veterans from Bungie, Rockstar, and Brave At Night (who you’ll probably know from Yes, Your Grace).

“Longdue’s debut RPG explores the delicate interplay between the conscious and subconscious, the seen and unseen,” the press release states. “Set in a world where choices ripple between the character’s psyche and environment, players will navigate a constantly shifting landscape, shaped by both internal and external forces.” I don’t know about you, but that certainly sounds a little Pale-like to me, no?

If you loved what The Thought Cabinet did in the original Disco Elysium, you’re probably going to love the new ‘psychogeographic RPG’ mechanic that Longdue is working on, where every decision reshapes both the world and the characters that inhabit it. In this experience, the lines between the mind and the environment blur, colliding and transforming with each choice, leading players through an ever-evolving narrative landscape. Colour me intrigued.

The press release certainly says all the right things to get my attention. It notes that Longdue aims to create games that “resonate emotionally and intellectually.” It assures us that the studio is here to “build a reputation for consistently delivering quality, with a focus on depth and narrative integrity”. This is, per the messaging, “just the beginning of Longdue’s journey to become a trusted name in the greater RPG canon”.

The studio is funded by by “private investors from the tech world”, though, and we saw how that all went down with Studio ZA/UM. It turns out that people who are so wealthy that light bends around them have the power to cause quite a lot of problems for creatives. Who’d have thought it, ey?

But, reservations aside, I’m excited about this. We just don’t get a lot of games that are as narratively and mechanically rich as Disco Elysium these days – the closest I can think of are probably Citizen Sleeper and Pentiment, but neither quite scratches the same itch. Disco Elysium, I’m not alone in thinking, was really something special.

But, good things are never built to last, are they? In a tale that could have been spun from one of the game’s many side-stories, the collapse of the Disco Elysium idea post-release was messy, personal, and achingly sad. Key figures in that first game’s development parted ways with developer Studio ZA/UM in 2021 (Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere), and torpedoed a sequel as they exited.

Following that, earlier this year, we learned that another spin-off game set in the same universe has been cancelled. And rumours abound that we’ll never get a Disco Elysium sequel or spin-off from Studio ZA/UM, ever.

Whatever Longdue is working on will likely be our best chance at getting something even remotely similar, then. I’ll be keeping my eye on this one, and updating you whenever there’s any news.