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Today
Feature: Lukewarm takes incoming
Don't come any closer, pal. I've got a gun. Oh wait, maybe I don't, because I pawned it when I was extremely drunk, and I didn't do a deal with the corrupt union boss to get it back. Oh dear, now a voice in my head that says it's Electrochemistry is trying to convince me to get drunk. I must be in bleak but lovely…
1 week ago
Feature: You won't feel a thing
The Schwarzschild radius of the Steam Charts continues to shrink as the effects of the Universal Collapse take greater impact on our daily lives. Read on if you want to know how to protect your family from complete atomic devastation.
Feature: Existence precedes disco
How Disco Elysium’s opening sets the stage for existential revolt
Existentialism. A word with baggage, and about it. Philosophers have deployed it to cover many different things, but they're all concerned with the baggage of being alive. The urgent dilemma of existence, as beings without apparent purpose. The concept fascinates me. It's what I get up for in the morning. Based on the opening minutes of detective RPG Disco Elysium, so does ZA/UM. It's clear…
2 weeks ago
Feature: Hectocotylus
People, I face a dilemma. (Great cars, them Dilemmas. - Ed) This week Destiny 2 takes up an astonishing five out of ten spaces on the Charts. So what's a professional games journalist of 20 years experience to do? Write ten octopus facts in less detail but with more jokes, or six more involved entries perhaps better celebrating our cephalopod friends? I've opted for the…
3 weeks ago
You don't need your deals herald to tell you that wordy isometric RPG Disco Elysium is finally a thing you can buy, did you know that to celebrate the release of ZA/UM's intriguing debut, GOG are giving away a free copy of Stygian Software's equally word isometric RPG UnderRail with every purchase? I thought not. Hurry, though, as this deal won't last for long. Read…
Feature: My uncle told me "disco biscuits" is slang for bad drugs
So, then. Disco Elysium, like Planescape: Torment, or even Fallout or Arcanum, is an isometric RPG with a lot of text. You, an alcoholic, probably drug-addicted cop in early middle age, wake up to face a new partner, a lynching that needs solving, and an apocalyptic hangover that has wiped your memory. So, you start the work of learning... well, everything. I managed to stumble…
Feature: Cogito ergo sum confusus
Disco Elysium Thought Cabinet: the Thoughts system explained
The Disco Elysium Thought Cabinet is one of the game's defining features. And that's saying something, considering the many different ways in which ZA/UM have deviated from the traditional RPG structure. In Disco Elysium, it's not just tools and clothes that you can equip but also Thoughts that you can mull over and adopt, almost always with both positive and negative results. Our Disco Elysium…
Feature: Don't worry; I spent about an hour on character creation too
The Disco Elysium skills and character creation system, much like the game itself, is big, brilliant, bizarre, and bewildering. With the four primary abilities of Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motorics each influencing a set of six distinct secondary skills, there's an enormous amount to learn and figure out before you even begin to delve into the story itself. Our Disco Elysium skills guide will walk…
4 weeks ago
Feature: Disco inferno
I am still figuring out what I think of Disco Elysium, but I can say with some certainty that it is the first game where I have done a small fistpump and thought to myself, "Yeah, you really nailed telling that woman you found her husband's body! Nailed it! Best cop ever!" Disco Elysium is a very dense RPG, where you play an amnesiac alcoholic…
1 month ago
Feature: Skill check for 'an exclusive'
Disco Elysium’s developers are in “a bloody battle” for the human mind
When visiting ZA/UM's studio, I had to take my boots off. This is because their studio, where they are putting the final touches on open world RPG Disco Elysium, is also a flat in a townhouse in Hove, where several of them live. It has nice wooden floors, unbelievably high ceilings, and a big bay window cradling some workstations. There's also a bookshelf full of…
While the fascinating surreal detective RPG, Disco Elysium should come to a tidy conclusion when it launches this month, developer ZA/UM say that should they get the possibility to make a sequel... well, they have some ideas. Chief among these is the option for a pregnant woman as a second protagonist, which sounds potentially wild in a wordy RPG where your inner thoughts and physical…
Learn about the making of Disco Elysium, Observation and more at EGX on October 18th
Do you like hearing indie devs spilling the beans about the secrets of game design? Would you also like to see the lovely faces of RPS coaxing said developers to spill those beans at the same time? Well then, you better get yourself over to the Rezzed Sessions stage on Friday October 18th at EGX 2019, as we'll be hogging the stage from 2.30pm onwards…
2 months ago
Fascinating detective RPG Disco Elysium launching in October
Surreal detective thriller Disco Elysium sounds too good to be true, so weird and clever and fascinating that I've been happy for it to live in the dream space of what might be rather than face it in the real world as an actual concrete game I can actually play and potentially be disappointed by. That bliss will soon end, as developers ZA/UM today announced…
10 months ago
Feature: Listen now or don't, see if I care
New year, old friends. The boys and girls of the RPS podcast have not been reborn, they have no resolutions, no ambitious goal to learn German or eat more spinach. They just want to play more videogames. Unbelievable. So let’s listen to them chat about the shooters and RPGs that have them most excited. That’s what they do on these podcasts, you know, they…
1 year ago
Feature: Walking a mile
A good writer should know when to deliver an old cliché or familiar idiom, and when to hold them back. They can give the reader a sense of comfort, a lifeline to cling to in a sea of unfamiliar or complex verbiage, or be the anchor that drags them down into boredom. I knew I was going to like Disco Elysium, because people I trust…
Feature: Don't let us down
As we stare into the weary, craggy face of the final quarter of 2018, there is still a glimmer of hope. The games are not yet done. They will never be done. And the impending release of them, some close, some a little further away, stirs something within us. The delicate, easily crushed butterfly of excitement. We may catch it yet, to keep in our…
EGX 2018 hits Birmingham next week – try out these PC gems at the show
There's just one week left until a borderline-biblical plague of developers descend upon Birmingham to showcase their up-and-coming games to all. This great gathering shall be known as EGX 2018 and starts on September 20th, running until the 23rd. There's going to be hundreds of games on show there across all platforms, featuring developers of all shapes and sizes - both physically and business-wise. While I'll be…
Feature: "Did I just say in an interview that I’m better than China Mieville?"
Disco Elysium (formerly known as No Truce With The Furies) is shaping up to be ridiculously good. It's an upcoming RPG that slips you into the shoes of a detective in a hardboiled urban fantasy world, where combat happens through dialogue and your internal monologue can be both a hindrance and a help. Your skills have their own personalities and sometimes wrestle control away from…
2 years ago
The combat engine is so often the heart of an RPG, even in the tabletop sphere. Characters shuffle around a battle-grid, attacks are tabulated, armour classes are defined, hit points are shaved away until only one side is left standing. Not so for upcoming police-drama RPG Disco Elysium. In their latest development blog, Studio ZA/UM go into detail on combat in the game including why…
Feature: Listen and get Rezzed
It’s a podcast special! Astrid Johnson takes us through the halls of London game show EGX Rezzed, on a search for oddities and weirdness. And she finds plenty of both. There’s Stereopolis, a game projected onto a disc of frosted glass, or Wobble Garden, which is played entirely by twanging a bunch of springy door stoppers (pictured above). It’s an overview of the show for…
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