As Disco Elysium Studio Za/UM continues the development in its C4 espionage monitoring, the staff has described friendly competition with rival developer projects that since then have abandoned the study following disorderly demands.
The key members of the ZA/UM team left in 2021 before multiple demands filed against the study, which have since been resolved. Following this, several studies have been recently founded and are launching projects that claim to be spiritual successors of album Elysium, which includes LongDue and its “Psychogeographic RPG” Hopetown and XXX NightShift by Dark Math Games, a developer who describes himself as a “group of rupture of the original development team of Diskysium.”
ZA/UM itself is working on C4, as well as a mobile elysium disc adaptation to “captivate the Tiktok user.” I had the opportunity to speak with the main producer Ruudu Ulas and the main writer SIIM (Kosmos) Sinamäe at the game Developer Conference this year (GDC).
“Let’s say this situation has really built the character of the team in good sense,” Sinamäe said. “Each artist faces certain difficulties in their artistic practice. This is what makes them better.”
“But, of course, I am really excited to see what each of the studies that has grown from ZA/UM will be shown in the coming months and years,” Uls added.
I asked the couple if there was a friendly competition among the studies. “For us, we always believe it is a friendly competition,” Sinamäe said. “We will really think about what other writers are doing, or studies … How can I be better with my own trade? We are essentially competing against ourselves, can we take it further? Do we have to make any commitment? I think it distinguishes us absolutely.”
So what makes a ZA/UM game unique? For ULAS, it is the wide range of people with different skill sets that makes the team unique. “We have many people who come from different areas of life, instead of video games,” he said. “I am trained as a contemporary artist, there are people who come from a traditional fashion and 2D fashion background, etc.
“Working together is what distinguishes us, I think, and also going through these difficult and challenging times as a study and growing as a team at all times. When I wake up in the morning and log in to do my job, that is what motivates me.”
In a presentation, the couple showed me the subjective worlds and contrasting objectives of C4, each with their own artistic style and game elements. The target world, for example, includes a gray superposition when the player’s character reviews his watch, while the subjective world is full of surreal art to transmit the player’s psychology.
In fact, with C4, the team intends to explore the human mind and its complexities as the operant protagonist adopts multiple covers and struggles with his sense of himself. Within their thought cabinet, players can reinforce or suppress thoughts, which will not only affect the way the narrative develops, but will provide dissonances as it progresses, perhaps adopting a new cover will cause reinforced perceptions for change. The elections will be influenced not only by dice rolls but also by three key limits: anxiety, delirium and fatigue.
All of which means that C4 seems to be another integral video game of ZA/UM, with a sandy spying tone far from the typical James Bond rate. The remaining team in the study seems capable of a worthy album follow -up Elysium, but remains to be seen if it can be above their classmates.
