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One of the things that made Summer Eternal stand out from the not quite Disco Elysium successor studio crowd when it was announced was the unique way its developers - the majority of whom are ex-ZA/UM - had gone about setting up its structure.
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It's been a pretty depressing year for the games industry, with more layoffs and cutbacks than anyone can remotely justify, as corporate bigwigs still take home huge compensation packages, or waltz into golden parachutes. As much as they can, developers are trying to fight back against this tide of misery, but it's a tough task, as the developers at not quite Disco Elysium sucessor studio Summer Eternal know all too well.
How do you follow-up your work on Disco Elysium, without just making something that's too much like Disco Elysium to be as innovative as Disco Elysium was? It's a hell of a riddle, and also a thing that Summer Eternal, the new studio featuring ex-ZA/UM devs that came with its own manifesto, is grappling with.
“Disco Elysium shaped me as much as I shaped it, and I am eternally grateful for the experience,” Argo Tuulik, the last writer of the original game to depart ZA/UM, tells me.
In case you were living underneath a rock with the insulindian phasmid, a whole bunch of new projects and studios that involve developers who worked on Disco Elysium and look like they could well appeal to people who liked Disco Elysium were announced last week. While they all look interesting, the last one that of these things that popped up like an outbusts from Harry Du Bois' psyche might be the most looks like it might be the most Disco of them all - even coming with its own manifesto.