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What number of Disco Elysium successor studios is simply too many? Trick query, no such quantity has but been invented. For the second time as we speak (and the fourth time complete) a gaggle of former ZA/UM devs has introduced they’re coming collectively in addition up a brand new studio. This one is known as Darkish Math Video games, and it is engaged on XXX Nightshift, which appears, huh, a bit like Disco Elysium.
No, we’ve not unintentionally revealed the identical story twice. The opposite Disco Elysium successor studio introduced earlier as we speak was Longdue, which can also be a studio boasting DE vets that claims it is engaged on an RPG impressed by the 2019 traditional. Darkish Math joins that studio, in addition to Purple Data and ZA/UM itself, as a pretender to the Disco crown. Did I generally get these studios combined up scripting this piece? Thoughts your individual enterprise.
Darkish Math is predicated within the UK, and pitches itself as “a breakaway group from the unique
growth group of Disco Elysium” and has a group of 20 devs proper now. Simply which ZA/UM vets it has on-staff it’s a little exhausting to say, although. The press launch asserting the studio’s existence solely names Timo Albert—former ZA/UM movement graphic designer—as one of many studio’s 4 founders, with everybody else going unnamed.
However possibly there is a motive for that: A fast look on the Corporations Home entry for Darkish Math lists Heiti Kender as a present director, and his brother Kaur Kender as a now-resigned director. If you happen to’ve not adopted the drama that is engulfed ZA/UM correct lately, Kaur Kender is likely one of the figures on the centre of it.
In courtroom paperwork filed by Robert Kurvitz (ZA/UM founder and DE lead author) and Alexander Rostov (founder and DE artwork director), the pair alleged that they had been compelled out of the studio with actions tantamount “to prison wrongdoing punishable by as much as three years imprisonment” that “had been perpetrated by Ilmar Kompus and Tõnis Haavel with help from Kaur Kender” within the messy aftermath of DE’s launch. Kender himself withdrew a lawsuit in opposition to ZA/UM’s majority shareholder and CEO in 2022.
So maybe it is none too shocking that the PR surrounding Darkish Math does not draw consideration to that drama by mentioning any names past Albert, who says the purpose with XXX Nightshift is “innovating the normal RPG mechanics” to “deliver one thing recent to the desk. You will notice. And naturally, a number of much less phrases. And some extra bullets, maybe. In complete: lot extra enjoyable.”
It actually does seem like Disco Elysium, thoughts you, proper right down to the presentation of its dialogue in a strip alongside the right-hand aspect of the display screen. Plus, you are a sort of cop known as a “Patrol Operative” and the sport calls itself a “true detective RPG.”
Which, hey, I am undoubtedly eager to take a look at, even when I nonetheless have a number of questions on Darkish Math’s employees and their position within the fallout round ZA/UM. The dialogue trailer makes it look intriguingly moody, and the premise—you are a cop stranded at a luxurious Antarctic ski resort—is exactly the sort of weirdness I may see myself getting very into.