Disco Elysium
Developer/publisher ZA/UM Studio
Format PC
Release Out now
They descend on you as you struggle to wake, bloodied and hungover, in the ruins of a hotel room: a barrage of voices, like pirate radio stations competing for the same frequency. In ZA/UM’s brilliant, crackpot hybrid of alternate-1970s whodunnit and Black Isle-era CRPG, your character traits are themselves characters who live inside your head. A vast chunk of the game’s million-word script is given over to interjections only you, a self-destructive amnesiac detective, can hear – interjections that range from advice through good-natured heckling to frothing contempt.
Some voices urge you to be methodical, to show restraint when interviewing suspects,’s skill system is a marvellous reworking of calcified genre conventions. In – another RPG set in one corner of a larger world – you must gather your party before setting out. In this game, your character the party, and there are plenty of companions you might wish you could leave behind.
