Ex-ZA/UM developers reveal Red Rooster, an "incendiary RPG" that is very intentionally not trying to be a "Disco Elysium successor" or "Disco-like"

Earlier this month, the former Disco Elysium developers of worker co-operative studio Summer Eternal sent me a 500-page anthology describing their new game Red Rooster. It's a 3D, real-time, third-person RPG you could broadly style as a spiritual Disco successor, working in the tradition of Planescape: Torment and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, but which also owes much inspiration to Baldur's Gate 3 and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. It takes place in a magic realist, "our-world-adjacent", mightily flammable and divided river city called Arta-Tantor, created with Unreal Engine and housing a "physics-powered sandbox of objects you can individually move, manipulate – and burn. " Here, you will live out the story of Redrick Roost, a convict serving a life sentence after accidentally rendering thousands of people catatonic by means of an "auto-meditation" headset. Much like Disco's Harry, Redrick has a whole world of characters in his head – a hallucinatory vacuum shop or "chicken coop" full of alternate selves or "roosters", who vie for dominance as the game goes on, affecting your dialogue options and abilities.

ZA/UM, the controversial studio behind Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, has confirmed that its next CRPG will launch on Switch 2 on 3rd November 2026. Zero Parades: Director's Cut is the studio's second outing and was released on PC in May of this year. The Director's Cut, which launched as a free update for owners on PC earlier this month, features several key improvements, including re-recorded English voiceover and a revamped inventory system.

"An experimental attempt to formalise community decision-making. " Elsewhere on the site, you can read a big reveal piece that outlines the new game from former Disco Elysium devs under the name of Summer Eternal - an "incendiary RPG" fusing the best bits of text-heavy isometric role-playing games with the world-building and player agency of an immersive sim. It's bold, it's ambitious, and it's still in development, and if it all comes off, it could be something really special.

Psychic Software have announced The Lich Wars, a standalone prequel for their widely acclaimed RPG The Necromancer's Tale. Widely acclaimed by me, anyway. I'm pretty wide, these days – the local Morrisons keeps doing discounts on 80-biccy packets of bourbon creams. I liked The Necromancer's Tale specifically for how it wove a whole RPG around the narrative dynamics of a single RPG class, with players performing rituals in each chapter to develop their morbid spellcraft, while managing the suspicions of nearby townsfolk. I also really loved its choose-your-own-adventure prologue. The Lich Wars sort of spins the prologue out into a full game.

I generally find it quite frustrating how limited the medium of games insists on being when it comes to engaging in a wide breadth of genres. One particular genre that its filmmaking cousin frequently utilises but is rarely seen within games is comedy. Sure, occasionally a game makes an attempt at telling a joke within a cutscene (failing more often than not (comedy's hard!)), but rarely is it a genre mechanically. So I'm quite pleased to learn of Send in the Clown, a turn-based RPG where you play as a clown that has to save a 12 year old's birthday party… and it only has one turn. In Send in the Clown, you play as Pockets, a horrendously sad name for a clown. He has been hired to perform at Miranda's birthday party, except it's being ruined by her shitty brother Tad. Your goal, then, is to save the day by saving the party by, uh, fighting a child! That's Tad, to be clear. The problem is, Tad is a dirty trickster, and despite you being a literal adult, isn't easy to take down. Your solution to that is by trying to make friends with everyone and anyone at the party.

You best start believing in ghost stories, Mr. Wyatt; you might be in one Adam Scott's horror-filled Ireland vacation is now streaming on Hulu