Disco Elysium

Today FORTRESS OCCIDENT announce Disco Elysium, a story-driven role playing game about being a total failure. An almost irreversible, unmitigated failure. Both as a human being and an officer of the law.

Find yourself in a strange and familiar new world, where you can go anywhere you want to. See that liquor store? You can go there. See that motor-carriage? You can drive it into the ocean. See that phone booth? You can call her, and make her love you again!

Or - you can take one final case and crawl back to life.


Disco Elysium has:

* An original genre of setting, developed for 15 years in absolute secret. Neither fantasy, alternate history, or any known type of -punk, a novel set in the same world has been dubbed fantastic realism.

* The most advanced visuals ever made for the isometric perspective. A trick of the trade we call paintshading lets us create a moving contemporary oil painting.

* Writing by chronically success-impaired science fiction author Robert Kurvitz and original music by the Mercury prize winning band British Sea Power.

* A realistic skill system lets you develop original ideas using Conceptual Thinking, tune your nervous system with Electrochemistry, and become a disgrace to the uniform with Composure, a skill that lets you don your disco outfit to the maximum effect.

* Thought Cabinet, an inventory for thoughts, where you process the ideas you've stumbled on. Ideas become fixtures, permanent beliefs that you can't get rid of, even if you want to.

* Exactly one hundred and twenty eight times more choice and consequence than previously thought possible in a role playing video game. This is a world where even the smallest things you say matter.


We are inspired by "Planescape: Torment", "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare" and "Kentucky Route Zero".
Disco Elysium has been in development for over a year. It's expected by the end of 2016 for PC.

Visit our frequently updated social media hijinks:
Website fortressoccident.com
Facebook facebook.com/fortressoccident
Instagram instagram.com/fortressoccident

More information.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. . .

I'm curious.

RPGWatch Curation:

In Disco Elysium you roleplay a detective. The game features lots of skill checks, choices with consequences, memorable NPCs, a twisting plot, much text and no combat. A unique, true piece of art!

Click to expand...

I dont understand why reviews keep saying it doesnt have combat when it has (sure, not very common but it does exist).

Don't expect a sequel or any other game.

The core team at ZA/UM of Disco Elysium were ousted last year - RPGCodex

I, Martin Luiga, a founding member and Secretary of the ZA/UM cultural association, as well as the assembler of most of the core team, am hereby dissolving the ZA/UM cultural association (not to be confused with the ZA/UM company, on which subject I would note that neither Kurvitz, Hindpere nor Rostov are working there since the end of last year and their leaving the company was involuntary. Which would seem like bad news for the loving fans that are waiting for the Disco sequel.)

The reason for dissolving the cultural organization is that it no longer represents the ethos it was founded on. People and ideas are meant to be eternal; organizations may well be temporary. I find that the organization was successful overall and most of the mistakes that were made were contingent, determined by the sociocultural conditions we were thrown into. I still encourage people to organize, and I would say that one of the qualities that the ZA/UM cultural organization sorely lacked was pretty much any formal structure.

For a while, it was beautiful. My sincerest thanks to all that have rooted for us.

Click to expand...

I wasn't expecting that I thought they really seemed to know what they wanted to be doing. Oh well. Good luck to all of them.

Couchpotato said:

Don't expect a sequel or any other game.

Click to expand...

The company is definitely working on another game. What it is, I don't think anyone knows yet.

The company yes not it's founders or original team though. I could have said it different then above but you'll have to excuse me, as I already posted thirty replies earlier today.

Anyway you look at that news above it's not good.

If they really lost their lead-writer, it's not good, I imagine.

Sounds like the people who actually created this world over the course of many years were ousted by investors who think that having money means they know better. It's gross, as capitalism so often is.

I'm just glad we got Disco Elysium to begin with. It's an unusually idiosyncratic, daring, unique game to reach the level of success it has (or even be made).

The lead creator is Robert Kurvitz. The game is supposedly based on a world he created in a novel that he put out in 2013, but the novel is only available in Estonian so it's not easy to know how truly connected they are. He left the company sometime last year, and that was already discussed online quite a bit (maybe not on RPGWatch - not sure). It's not exactly news.

I hadn't heard about the other two that this Martin Luiga guy mentioned, though. Maybe those are new developments. Not sure how important they are. Probably not that important compared to Kurvitz.

Here's the official update instead of the Codex.

Stingray said:

The lead creator is Robert Kurvitz. The game is supposedly based on a world he created in a novel that he put out in 2013, but the novel is only available in Estonian so it's not easy to know how truly connected they are. He left the company sometime last year, and that was already discussed online quite a bit (maybe not on RPGWatch - not sure). It's not exactly news.

I hadn't heard about the other two that this Martin Luiga guy mentioned, though. Maybe those are new developments. Not sure how important they are. Probably not that important compared to Kurvitz.

Click to expand...

The lead creator Robert Kurvitz has also left the company.

Yeah, that's what I said in my post. It was discussed online about a year ago. Sites reporting Kurvitz leaving as "news" (like the rpgsite.net article) haven't been paying much attention...

Someone really ought to fix the date on the OP. I'm pretty sure DE wasn't announced in 2007.

Yeah I don't follow news on this game much myself as it wasn't my cup of tea.

So this is new news for me.

Behold the drama has intensified and looks to have become a legal problem.

Disco Elysium Former employees were fired for Misconduct- Gamesindustry

Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM has confirmed an Estonian press report of mismanagement and misconduct among former senior employees to GamesIndustry.biz.

The reports follow news that three key members of ZA/UM – Disco Elysium designer Robert Kurvitz, writer Helen Hindpere, and art director Aleksander Rostov – had been dismissed from the company last year.

In an exclusive statement, ZA/UM detailed some of the reasons behind recent dismissals, but did not name any specific individuals.

The studio said the dismissed employees had limited to no engagement in their responsibilities and work, created a toxic work environment, demonstrated misconduct towards other employees including verbal abuse and gender discrimination, and attempted to illegally sell ZA/UM's intellectual property.

Click to expand...

We also have this other narrative from it's game director and art director.

Wow. Most concerning. I'd love there to be a sequel but with all this tom-foolery going on it seems quite unlikely at this stage. It wasn't the best game I played that year but it was certainly an enjoyable experience for me and I would have loved to see how they could evolve as a studio.

A sequel could still be possible, but it obviously wouldn't have all the original developers involved.