Hopetown studio Longdue confirm original narrative lead on Disco Elysium-esque RPG's exit, but say its opening is now playable

Ex-ZA/UM writer Martin Luiga is present heading up the crippled astir a rogue writer successful a mining town

Image credit: Longdue Games

You mightiness beryllium alert of the large Disco thrupening, oregon quadrupening depending connected however you classify things. Over the past mates of years, a fig of caller studios person loudly hoovered up assorted ex-Disco Elysium devs pursuing interior struggle astatine ZA/UM, and announced games that purpose to rebottle the RPG's lightning. One specified workplace is Londgue, who precocious told maine their partially-crowdfunded RPG called Hopetown present has a playable intro, contempt softly switching communicative leads past year.

I interviewed 2 of Hopetown's cardinal developers successful April past year, astir the clip Longdue launched a Kickstarter run to supply "a tiny percent of the full budget" for the game. The campaign's since much than doubled its archetypal £25,000 goal, amassing £117,924 from conscionable implicit 2,700 backers. Development is present underway, but the communicative pb I interviewed, Grant Roberts, is nary longer astatine Longdue. Roberts' LinkedIn illustration indicates helium near the workplace successful July 2025, conscionable 3 months aft the Kickstarter's launch.

The erstwhile Rocksteady and Bungie writer's departure from a task his LinkedIn illustration cites him arsenic having "defined, refined, and evangelised the imaginativeness for" appears to person happened beauteous softly - truthful softly that, arsenic of writing, he's inactive listed successful the squad conception of Hopetown's website.

To beryllium fair, erstwhile ZA/UM developer Martin Luiga was acknowledged arsenic Hopetown's communicative pb successful a abbreviated developer update posted by Longdue past August, though that update doesn't notation him having taken implicit from Roberts. I precocious reached retired to some Roberts and Longdue astir this. The second responded with the pursuing statement:

We decided to portion ways with Grant Roberts - who was communicative pb - aft Martin Luiga (former co-founder of ZAUM and writer connected Disco Elysium) scaled up his enactment with Longdue, and took implicit the relation of communicative and originative pb aft re-designing the skills strategy of the game.

The workplace besides provided a punctuation from Luiga outlining however Hopetown's improvement is going arsenic of January 2026. "We've re-designed and extensively tested a caller skills system, based connected my learnings from the aboriginal days of penning connected Disco Elysium," the developer said. "We've besides made unthinkable advancement connected the world, characters, and crippled and person defined the opening country of the crippled itself that is present successful playable form, with variations of the introductory series written by myself and our penning team."

Longdue person been posting monthly abbreviated developer updates with antithetic members of Hopetown's existent squad since that 1 with Luiga past August, truthful here's hoping connected behalf of immoderate folks who've backed the Kickstarter that a due look astatine each of this evident advancement is released arsenic portion of those soon.

Meanwhile, archetypal Disco workplace ZA/UM proceed to plow up with their ain Disco follow-up, Zero Parades. Dark Math Games and Summer Eternal - 2 studios which IGN reported successful 2024 are oregon person been linked to each different and Longdue successful assorted messy ways which occasionally beggar content - are besides moving connected their ain Discoey things. For Dark Math, that's present a skis edifice execution enigma crippled called Tangerine Antarctic. For Summer Eternal, it's a mysterious crippled codenamed Red Rooster, which they announced by mode of a book. Finally, Disco Elysium pb writer Robert Kurvitz and creation manager Aleksander Rostov are reportedly moving connected their ain crippled astatine different workplace named Red Info, and person remained comparatively quiescent compared to ZA/UM and the thruple of studios I've conscionable mentioned frankincense far.

I personally stay alternatively sceptical of immoderate of these shots to the Disco chaser, thing which extends to ZA/UM's in-house effort to re-ignite the magic pursuing what surely sounds similar a horrible fewer years to person been a dev connected the original.