The next game from the studio that published Disco Elysium has been revealed.
ZA/UM Studio has revealed its next game, currently known by the name Project C4, which it describes as “a new mind-warping espionage RPG that blends player introspection, deep character-driven dialogue, and high-stakes encounters steered by dice rolls.”
According to a press release, the game’s world “is rife with shadowy characters who help move the pieces for competing geopolitical powers in a game of concealed conflict”.
Players are tasked with completing “a desperate assignment” which could see them “losing their life, or much worse – being exposed for what they really are”.
Players take control of an Operant, who serves a “questionable global power”, and has to take part in a “vicious, clandestine struggle for truth and influence”.
According to the studio, Project C4 will let players take psychoactive substances to alter their character’s mind, saying: “Players must steel themselves with whatever comfort they can in order to survive the violent canvas of the real.”
While ZA/UM’s most notable release was Disco Elysium, it’s unlikely that many of the Disco Elysium team will be getting involved with this new project, given conflicts between the company and its former employees in recent years, most notablythe string of explosive allegations madein late 2022 by former Disco Elysium developers and the owners of the studio that fired them.
In November 2022, Disco Elysium game director Robert Kurvitz and art director Aleksander Rostov claimed that after an Estonian company called Tütreke OÜ acquired a majority shareholding in the company, they “were quickly excluded from daily operations”, their “employment was terminated” and their “access to the company’s information was shut off”.
They then alleged that Tütreke OÜ acquired the studio “by fraud” by illegally taking money from ZA/UM itself and using it to buy its majority stake.
ZA/UM then responded by denying accusations of fraud, and said that several employees had been dismissed due to “egregious misconduct”.
Further reading
Last year it was reported thatZA/UM was laying off a quarter of its staffand cancelling a standalone expansion for Disco Elysium. It was claimed that this was the studio’s third cancellation, after a Disco Elysium sequel and a sci-fi game.
Meanwhile, back in October, two separate studios made up of former ZA/UM staff were announced on the same day – Longdue Games (said to be working on a spiritual successor to Disco Elysium) and Dark Math Games (which is working on XXX Nightshift, another detective RPG).
