There is a moment in one of the No-Clip documentaries on Disco Elysium (Part 4: Art) where Rostov talks about how artists went from a respected profession under the soviets to a shunned group fighting eachother for meagre grants. I was surprised to learn that some estimates of DEs budget was as high as 3 million euros. While Disco Elysium is a unique creation of talented artists, I guarantee you could walk into any city in the world with 3 million and probably come out of it with the makings of another ZA/UM. What they make probably wouldn't resemble DE in any way but I know for sure it would be better than any successor game that will come from these studios.
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
25 points (96.3% liked)
Games
21249 readers
291 users here now
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
Rules
- No racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, or transphobia. Don't care if it's ironic don't post comments or content like that here.
- Mark spoilers
- No bad mouthing sonic games here :no-copyright:
- No gamers allowed :soviet-huff:
- No squabbling or petty arguments here. Remember to disengage and respect others choice to do so when an argument gets too much
- Anti-Edelgard von Hresvelg trolling will result in an immediate ban from c/games and submitted to the site administrators for review. :silly-liberator:
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
DE had some amazing art but I feel like the main thing is the writing, so I have hope that wherever the writers went we'll have something pretty good.
It shouldn't be surprising that the writing isn't hitting the same, the lead writer and designer of DE isn't involved with this and neither is a lot of other key staff. This isn't the same ZA/UM, it's a corpse puppeteered by investors.
Yeah, I was wondering how much of the original staff was left. I know a lot of them splintered into 3 or 4 different companies. It looks like the "true" successor will be SUMMER ETERNAL but there are a few others that look promising.
What is the "True successor"? Kurvitz, Rostov and Hindpere are in Red Info and no one knows what they're making and it's a traditional company with investors and junk.
Summer Eternal is a cooperative and big into the communism thing, but none of the people who started Summer Eternal held senior roles during the development of Disco Elysium iirc. Also some of the original Disco Elysium staff already left.
We need the ”we're building a classless, moneyless and stateless society” comic except with ”we're making a spiritual successor to Disco Elysium”.
I don't know what comic you're referring to, but yeah "We're former ZA/UM and we're making a spiritual successor to Disco Elysium" is a wide category with a lot of caveats for every participant.
Mr. Elysium is helping me build my game
I posted a thread for Esoteric Ebb which is probably the (one of the?) first of the upcoming wave of directly by Disc Elysium inspired games. (The devs have nothing to do with ZA/UM if im not mistaken)
There are some pretty cool disco elysium inspired games.
Lovely ladies rpg has some positive buzz around it. But I haven't played it.
Rue Valley also looks very clearly inspired by disco elysium and the premise of time loop therapy sounds interesting.
Both of those are already out.
Coming up is Travelling At Night which is gonna be so ass. Gonna add Esoteric Ebb to the list
It was never going to be disco elysium, and whatever Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere make is also not going to be disco elysium, and summer eternal the most heavily "We're doing communist video games" breakaway is definitely not going to be making disco elysium, and Longdue Games whose thesis is basically "We're doing disco elysium but kinda x-files" is definitely definitely definitely not gonna make disco elysium.
Disco elysium happened because of a combination of the inspiration of the writers and designers, the completely botched creative process and the synchronicity of workers who are now scattered to the winds.
Also Disco Elysium is a setting that had ages to grow organically as Kurvitz' RPG campaign and novel and ended up being unique and unpredictable and beautiful and sad in ways you can't just recreate from scratch over and over again. It has a depth to it that is always felt even when it is not directly brought up.
For anyone interested The WoW Diary is a snappy read and demonstrates this point very clearly in the context of how Blizzard put lightning in a bottle despite the development being a disaster and then around the activation acquisition a ton of the passionate talent left (pre breast-milk gate)
communism happened, it was beautiful, and it fell apart. now everyone are trying to recreate it.
I'm not gonna buy or play or think about some game made by elitist comprador brits flown in to run the shell of a once great studio. I spit on the grave of everyone involved in creating this Frankensteiner cashgrab nostalgia and doubly so on anyone saying they're proud of being involved with it.
I don't blame people, like some of my friends, for bei g hyped about it, because they dont know what happened and only just recently played DE. if you do play it, pirate it.
Seems like a generic power fantasy euro fetishist slop that disco Elysium made fun of in the doomed commercial area. It is a fantasy story in every way that disco Elysium wasn't.
The premise is creatively bankrupt, the art is a subpar simulacra of the Elysium style, and the culture vultures at ZAUM are only confident in selling it as such.
Playing this is the 21st type of liberalism.
I've been enjoying Rue Valley btw. It's a much smaller story, but the "you have 47 minutes to get to know the locals then it all restarts" loop is pretty neat. Especially since you pretty quickly run up against a rich history of corporate exploitation and resistance that's likely tied to your loop.
Esoteric Ebb is due to come out on march 3rd and from having played the demo it's so far the only thing that really got that DE vibe to me (currently downloading zero parades).
I thought Rue Valley was nice and you feel the influence, but it's sort of "If you like CONTROL, you'll like Alan Wake 2"
The only problem I have with it so far is they fucked up the audio mix for stuff and there's a constant buzzing/cutouts.
It's definitely a lot rougher around the edges.