Yet another studio formed of Disco Elysium alumni has announced a cerebral sci-fi RPG, just to confuse you
You have woken to the sound of multiple former Disco Elysium developers arguing inside your own skull. They are bickering about whose game is the true spiritual successor to the rockbottom detective RPG. Is it the unnamed project announced earlier today by new studio Longdue, involving some kind of “psychogeography mechanic”? Or is it this one, XXX Nightshift, a cerebral sci-fi RPG set in a posh polar hotel about a detective “solving gruesome murders, breaking sacred hearts, or just killing bloody time”? It’s not for me to choose the dialogue option now appearing in your own brain. But I will say this: at least the one with the horny name has a trailer.
Ah, sultry whispering. Yes, this basically seems like an ASMR rework of the waking scene in Disco Elysium, in which detective Harry DuBois wakes up slowly to the quarreling sounds of his limbic system and a sense of deep worthlessness.
But here you’ll play a detective on holiday at an Antarctic ski resort in the year 2086, where something has gone wrong. “Now you’re stranded at the off-season resort with unforgettable guests, wild parties, and mad secrets,” say developers Dark Math Games.
There will be a similar crowd of dialogue-heavy skills that influence your choices, by the looks of things, along with skill checks and the like. Your character will be putting her training to use with “interrogations, confrontations, and seductions”. The sexy wording continues. “In the endless polar night, amidst the orgies of politics, power, and poetry, something gruesome lies waiting.”
There’s certainly more than a whiff of Revachol’s idiosyncratic lingo to the game’s writing so far. “Use Marafet calculations to alter your time and space,” we’re told. Enjoy the “Dopamine Buffet”. There’s also the ability to recruit companions to help you solve cases. I’ll call it now – you will probably fuck your companions.
ZAUM, the studio that made Disco Elysium, became wracked with internal disputes following that game’s release, which eventually led to employees leaving the company, including key directors like Robert Kurvitz and Aleksander Rostov. It looks like those two are not involved in either of these new games though. Regardless of who is or isn’t working on it, I still think XXX Nightshift is an, uh, interesting name choice. Insofar as I expect to see it written in comic sans on the Steam thumbnail of an ass in a g-string. But hey, you still have time to change your minds, Disco people. It’s been done before.