Yep, it’s one of those days again. At the same time that Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM has announced its own not Disco Elysium 2, one of the many would-be Disco spiritual successors in the works has revealed its first teaser, along with news of having brought on board another ex-Disco dev.
Longdue, the studio behind this particular kinda Discoey thing, is part of the messy sort of successor trio alongside Dark Math Games and Summer Eternal, and is about to commence a Kickstarter campaign for the psychological RPG it revealed in January. That Kickstarter will begin on March 17.
As you might remember, Hopetown, is the DE kinda successor where you play as a journalist in a mining town and has a “psychogeography system” that makes “emotions, memories, and conversations replace traditional mechanics like keys and levers, becoming the tools that unlock doors, alter landscapes, and reshape relationships”.
The fresh teaser for it doesn’t tell us much more, but it does see original Disco Elysium narrator Lenval Brown say some words as a camera pans down an artistically rendered hallway full of people arguing, before settling on Hopetown’s protagonist. Longdue has brought Brown on board to voice “a key character” in the game, as well as being “closely involved in the project”.
“It feels good to be back—to step into something new,” Brown said, “There’s nothing like bringing a world to life, shaping a story that’s been waiting to be spoken into existence.”
It’s also brought in another ex-Disco dev to work alongside the folks like narrative director Grant Roberts and technical lead Piotr Sobolewski seen in the latter part of the teaser, with Martin Luiga, an editor on the original Disco, having joined the Hopetown team.
“I am pleased to share my experiences with Longdue to help them craft the narrative and systems for Hopetown, playing to the strengths that the narrative RPG genre has achieved thus far and attempting to innovate upon them to tell a rich story based in equal parts on what has been, what is and what could be,” Luiga said, “I am confident that the team can deliver a worthy addition to the canon of Western RPGs.”
Are you keen to see how Hopetown turns out, assuming it can hit its crowdfunding goals and comes to fruition? Let us know below.