Longdue Games’ Devs Talk About Hopetown’s Big Ideas And Bigger Legacy

Martin: Disco Elysium broke the ground with its heightened level of psychological detail, its generally much less violent nature than has been the genre norm, and an intellectualism that was accessible but still rare in video games. With Hopetown, I hope to build upon and improve upon the Disco experience while not making it a ‘Disco clone’.

Grant: To be clear, we’re not specifically honoring the legacy of any one game. Disco Elysium is one of the most critically praised games in the genre’s history, beloved by players both inside and outside game development. We’re proud to continue the line of masterful CRPGs that started back in the 1990s, and winds through modern RPG classics, including Disco.

However, there are touchstones to be found in Disco Elysium that we’re also excited to explore: psychological complexity, intelligent storytelling, rich interiority, seismic conversations with characters. All in a world like our own, with themes that are extremely relevant to our world — but allowing for the truly extraordinary both inside and outside the protagonist’s head.

Grant: I assume this is referring to the concept image showing a conversation from our game. We originally created that image for our Kickstarter, to show some of the things our conversation system will do. But it was taken out of that context and used for promotional purposes. So it sort of accidentally became the first example of writing from Hopetown out in the world.

So then it’s out there, being compared to everyone’s memories of their favorite conversations in the history of video games — and specifically to games like Disco Elysium. That’s a pretty tough situation for any new creative work to be in.

We’re excited to get more of our work out there into the world for people to see, and judge for themselves.

Martin: I am there, Martin Luiga. I did team building for the original ZA/UM group, I have built two worlds with Robert Kurvitz, and I have written six characters for the Disco game itself – Noid, Lilienne, Annette, Plaisance, Mañana, and the Racist Lorry Driver. I also came up with the idea for Measurehead, but did not write him. I have also translated about half of Disco Elysium into Estonian (unpublished). I think I have some understanding of what made Disco work as a game, and thus I can attempt to replicate it. My main areas are writing, worldbuilding, editing, and general-purpose ideas.

Grant: We’ve had quite a few people at Longdue who’ve had a connection to Disco Elysium. That includes Martin, as well as Piotr Sobolewski, who was a co-founder of the Knights of U and is now a technical advisor at Longdue. The Knights handled the technical development of Disco. There’s Abena Jones, who was an editor for dialogue, skills, and the Thought Cabinet on Disco, and is doing much more than that for us. And of course, you’ve heard the voice of Lenval Brown, who was the unforgettable narrator for Disco. Lenval is playing another iconic role on Hopetown, and he’s helping us bring that character and others to life at Longdue.

There are other people from ZA/UM who have joined the team along the way, but they prefer to not be public due to all the well-documented chaos of the past, and how that’s occasionally resulted in harassment of developers.

But regardless of who is on our team, you don’t need to have made Disco Elysium to make something great in this genre. After all, no one at ZA/UM had made a game before!

Grant: Our writing will come from writers. Our art will come from artists. You could get a machine to write dialogue that sort of sounds like good writing, but that’s all it will sound like to people who know what good writing is.

Having said that, the development costs of games in 2025 continue to be prohibitively high, so we’ll investigate tools to help us build this game in ways that free up the developers to do what they do best. But that stops at the water’s edge — we have not and will not use AI for creative work.

Martin: I would say that the conflict between Argo Tuulik and Longdue Games is in many ways a spillover from the Disco fallout, and I do believe that this series of court cases has had an extreme influence on the development of Hopetown — I believe it would be a whole other game without the Disco fallout if it would even be made. This is because the Disco fallout moved some key people into places where they could be ready to contribute to making Hopetown.

Grant: It’s hard for me to convey just how eager we are to focus on the game we’re making. And hell, I can’t wait to experience what Summer Eternal is making. And what Dark Math is making. And what Red Info is making. And what ZA/UM is making. The future is bright for all of us, and that’s where we want to focus.

Martin: I am planning to get a weekly podcast running with people from the team — primarily about RPGs, but why not on other subjects too. I would rather spoil as little of the game as possible, but I understand it is a fine balance, and luckily I am not in charge of that department.

Grant: We’ve had a lot of fun posting updates on our Kickstarter and with our first live Q&A. We’ll continue to do both as long as we can get away with it. Plus, our Discord will be a great place to interact with the community.
We’re also planning on releasing in Early Access on Steam, which will be a great way to get feedback on the game.

Martin: Both of these systems are still in development, but I can already say that, as Harry had a number of skills that you would expect from a policeman, so he could do his work, with the Hopetown protagonist being a journalist, it is pretty much the same way. Psychogeography, I would picture as a more fleshed out Thought Cabinet — a sort of metanarrative that stresses the events of the game as being in communication with the protagonist’s backstory.

Grant: It’s true, the systems are still in development, and we also don’t want to give away too many details to let players experience these systems just as the player character will. The most important thing about them, though, is that they both provide opportunities for the player to make meaningful choices.

Martin: The mine location was already there when I came on board, but I believe the prime inspiration for the location choice was originally Zola’s ‘Germinal’ — and of course, mines are a staple of the RPG genre just as sewers and towns. Baldur’s Gate I had a story that revolved around mines, Arcanum, Fallout 2, Dragon Age had mines, mining is also heavily represented in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, which are integral to the way the role-playing genre has developed.

Grant: The mine location was already there when I came on board, too — but the game’s original setting, time period, protagonist, and pretty much everything else have changed.

But yes, we’re excited to explore the duality of a mining town: above and below, rich and poor, and so on. It resonates with one of the central themes of our story: the duality between the life that was created for you and the life you’re truly meant to lead.

Martin: I am presently involved as a developer and a consultant. A journalist and a policeman are both concerned with the truth of a matter so among other things the story will be a quest for some truth or truths, just like Disco was — but in many senses I think it will also be an inversion of Disco, as already the gender, skin color, age and profession of the protagonist would inform.

Grant: I mentioned Martin and Abena before. Plus, two other writers from ZA/UM were a part of this project in the beginning, but they’ve since moved on to start their own studio. But our writing team on Hopetown is going to do amazing things, and we can’t wait to show more of it.

Grant: Everything is storytelling. The user interface, the names of characters, the visual palette, how close the camera is, and, of course, audio. We can’t wait to explore how music, ambient sound, and everything else in the soundscape will make the world of Hopetown even more immersive and memorable.

Martin: It would be great to develop some mechanics that would make for a more varied gameplay and add more layers to the world, whether it be an avatar of the rich inner lives of the protagonist and her codependents, modern era telephonic communication or some kind of a shamanistic mandala. I personally would push towards having more but shorter dialogues than Disco has. I think this list is as of yet incomplete.

Grant: I’m most excited about the psychogeography system. We’ve got big plans for how you’ll engage with it to meaningfully affect the world around you, the world inside your head, and more.

Martin: I think when Robert went to make Disco, he wanted to make a game that he himself would like to play, and that he did it too, while getting a lot of feedback from a large number of people during the process. I’d say the premise needs to be good, the characters need to be strong, and the themes engaging for a game to gain traction.

Grant: I think it’s important to offer people a hand to help them into the boat. I’ve lost count of the number of games I’ve played where something keeps me at arm’s length, and I end up never going back. Even Disco Elysium, which deserves every syllable of praise it’s ever gotten, took three tries before it got its hooks into me. So one of the things we’re keeping in mind with Hopetown is making the first few minutes and the first few hours as accessible as possible.

And once we’ve got our claws in, we’re not letting go.

Grant: Well, now that the Kickstarter is over (though Late Pledges are still open if you missed out!), we’re incredibly excited to get back to working on the game full-time. We’ll continue to post updates featuring more information about the game, about the team, and so on. After that, our next significant milestone will be Early Access. In the meantime, people can join our Discord to chat with the rest of the community and with the team. We’ll be doing more live Q&As with familiar faces and new team members, so watch out for those. And of course, we’re on YouTube, Instagram, Bluesky, you name it. See you in Hopetown!