Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium is a role-playing game developed and published by the Estonian studio ZA/UM. It was released for Windows and macOS in October 2019, with console versions arriving later. The game takes place in Revachol, a fictional city on the island of Le Caillou, in a district called Martinaise. Its protagonist is a detective who wakes in a trashed hostel room with no memory of his identity or the events that brought him there. He is investigating the murder of a man found hanging behind the Whirling-in-Rags hostel.

The detective’s amnesia is not a mystery solved by a single clue. It shapes the investigation and the player’s choices: he must reconstruct his own past while questioning Martinaise’s residents and learning the history of Revachol. His partner, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, accompanies him through much of the case. Kim belongs to the Revachol Citizens Militia, the local police force, and his careful, measured approach contrasts with the protagonist’s unpredictable behavior. The murder investigation leads into a labor dispute between the dockworkers’ union and the Wild Pines Group, a powerful logistics company. The dead man’s identity and the circumstances of his death connect the personal crime to the district’s political conflicts.

The game’s role-playing system is organized around 24 skills, including Logic, Empathy, Authority, Inland Empire, and Shivers. These skills function as parts of the protagonist’s mind, commenting on conversations and interpreting the world. Players allocate points among them and choose how to respond, so a conversation can be shaped by reasoning, intuition, physical force, or failure. The Thought Cabinet adds another layer: the detective can internalize ideas and spend time developing them, gaining particular effects along with possible drawbacks. There is no conventional combat system built around repeated battles; dialogue, investigation, and decisions carry the central action.

Revachol’s history includes a failed communist revolution and a subsequent military defeat by an international coalition. The city remains under the authority of the Coalition, while its inhabitants live amid the consequences of that history. Political ideologies appear as choices and arguments within the game, but the narrative also gives attention to poverty, addiction, work, memory, and the pressures of everyday life in Martinaise.

Disco Elysium began as the tabletop role-playing campaign setting of Robert Kurvitz’s group, which became known as the setting of Elysium. Kurvitz wrote the game, and the studio’s team adapted that world into an unusually text-rich computer role-playing game. The Final Cut, released in 2021, added full voice acting throughout the game and new political vision quests. The game received major awards, including four wins at The Game Awards 2019: Best Narrative, Best Independent Game, Best Role-Playing Game, and Fresh Indie Game.