Ex-Disco Elysium Devs Launch Kickstarter for “Psychogeographic RPG” Hopetown

Longdue, a studio made up in part of former Disco Elysium developers and creative personnel, has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for its debut project Hopetown.

The studio describes Hopetown as a “psychogeographic RPG” that casts you as an ex-journalist looking to investigate “a town above, the world below, and the depths of your own psyche”. So far, so very Disco Elysium.

As with Disco Elysium, you’ll have the chance to play as you see fit; you can “spark chaos as a gonzo journalist” or “twist events as a conspiracist”, sure, but if you prefer to do things in a more straightforward way, you can also “reveal brutal truths as a calculated investigator”.

True to Longdue’s legacy, the studio promises that Hopetown‘s “psychogeography system” will replace traditional puzzles and keys with “emotions, memories, and conversations”. It sounds rather like if you love Disco Elysium, you’ll want to keep an eye on this as well.

The Kickstarter campaign for Hopetown is live now, and at time of writing, it had raised £19,967 of its £25,000 goal (apologies for using UK currency, but I’m a Brit, so it comes with the territory). It’s looking fairly likely the game will hit its goal by the end of the day.

Longdue is one of a number of studios that formed after original publisher ZA/UM effectively imploded following Disco Elysium‘s release. The studio boasts the involvement of ZA/UM co-founder Martin Luiga, who also wrote “seven characters in Disco Elysium“, according to the studio’s website.

Kentucky Route Zero co-creator Ben Babbitt and The Witcher 3 composer Pawel Blaszczak have also joined the team, so it’s fair to say Longdue is shaping up to be a real supergroup of developers at this stage.

Although many of ZA/UM’s principal creatives have left the studio, the company is still soldiering on. Just last week, it announced Project C4, which it describes as a new “genre-defining” RPG.

ZA/UM also unveiled a Disco Elysium mobile port last week, which studio head Denis Havel says is aimed at “captivating the TikTok user” with shorter blasts of narrative and gameplay.