The creators of Disco Elysium unofficially consulted on fascinating upcoming RPG Rue Valley during a brutalist architectural tour of Belgrade: 'It was completely unexpected'

There are a lot of studios taking a crack at developing 'the next Disco Elysium', but the one that's intrigued me the most so far is Rue Valley. Emotion Spark's narrative RPG is set during a 47-minute window in an out-of-the-way motel, featuring an enigmatic protagonist trying to forget about some unexplained trauma. At the end of the 47-minute run, time resets.

With its hand-drawn artstyle, isometric perspective, non-traditional RPG setting, a narrator who likes to needle you, and a focus on the protagonist's psyche, it's definitely spitting out Disco vibes, and this is not accidental. It's one of the key inspirations, which also includes Groundhog Day and, from the art side, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse.

In a new episode of the Human Can Opener podcast, creative director Marko Smiljanic shared a story about a trio of meetings the team had with members of the Disco team: lead writer and designer Robert Kurvitz, art director Aleksander Rostov and writer Helen Hindpere, which proved to be serendipitous.

The first time, Kurvitz and Rostov were in Belgrade, where Emotion Spark is based, "completely out of the blue," said Smiljanic. A mutual friend set up a meeting. "But they didn't want to meet at some restaurant; they wanted to go and look at the architecture of Belgrade. It's kind of brutalism in one part of Belgrade… And they were like, let's have a walk. It's not something you expect from any kind of meeting, mingling. No, let's just walk through Belgrade that's like half-disaster, but in some places it looks nice. It was very weird."

Smiljanic was nervous about talking to them about Rue Valley. "What if I tell them that I'm making a game based on their game, will they be OK with that? How will they see that? And I was overthinking which t-shirts to wear. If it has something [weird] on it, what will they think? Who is this guy? What is he trying to say? Some weird thoughts going through my head."

But it turned into a nice day out. They took in the sights, rode the bus and chatted about Belgrade. Later, over coffee, they got down to business: discussing Rue Valley.

"And the first thing [Kurvitz] said kinda blew my mind," said Smiljanic. "Because I was expecting some philosophical conversation about these themes in the game, or something like that. And he asked me, 'Do you guys plan to do voice acting?' And that's a very straightforward question. And he's not asking me from the perspective of a crazy game designer or narrative designer. He's asking about a business decision. He learnt it's hard to sell this kind of game if you don't have voice acting. It's a lot of text, and even for people who like to read a lot, it's hard to keep track. But if you have voice acting, it makes the game much more approachable."

Disco Elysium initially launched without full voice acting. What it did have was great, though some of the recordings were low quality, like all of Cuno's voiced dialogue. This was rectified in the brilliant Final Cut edition—a free upgrade that added full voice acting and new quests.

Smiljanic agreed with Kurvitz, and the team has been experimenting with voice acting. In the demo I played, there was already plenty of it—though the quality was a bit inconsistent. "You can be a genius and make amazing text," said Smiljanic, "but if you really want to get this game to a broader audience, you need to have voice acting. It's necessary."

While Smiljanic was worried about how the developers would feel about their game being used as a reference, Kurvitz alleviated his fears, telling him "I realised that we made a platform for writers to earn money." They were discussing how, as Smiljanic put it, "Disco Elysium moved the possibilities for making complex stories in a game without high production like in AAA games. And he was pleased about it."

Kurvitz would eventually return to Belgrade with Hindpere, where they visited the studio and played the demo. They bonded over using the same tools, but also how they did things differently. "I'm proud to say that we learnt from their mistakes," Smiljanic said. "I try to make things tidy. But when I showed them how our dialogue schemes work, and how much work it took (we put like 3 years to perfect this kind of platform so we could make this kind of content), Robert was like, 'OK, we had like a spaghetti monster all over the place. And this is all tidy and perfect, and we had it all over the place.'"

When Hindpere finished the demo, Smiljanic said she told him, "It's so weird that you feel at home, playing Rue Valley after Disco Elysium." The devs didn't get to experience Disco Elysium as players because they knew all the story beats and had put everything together themselves, but Smiljanic thinks they'll be able to experience something similar in Rue Valley.

"Everything is the same, tools, dialogues. But the story is new! For them, and I get it now with Rue Valley, you don't get this feeling of playing the game. And they also didn't in Disco. They were making it. They didn't play it properly. But in Rue Valley they felt like actually playing. It was very interesting for them that it feels like Disco, but it isn't."

Rostov then visited the studio on his own (clearly they couldn't get enough) and had an "art geek session of going to every nook and cranny of how art works in Rue Valley". Smiljanic said that he even implemented a few of Rostov's suggestions, "like characters casting shadows on themselves".

While it's unlikely that we'll ever get a Disco Elysium 2 (certainly not from the original team), and it's going to be a while before we get any games from the successor studios that sprouted out after the team's USSR-like dissolution, at least some of their ideas, and the philosophy that Disco Elysium was built on still seems to exist inside Rue Valley. It's not got a release date yet, but it's "coming soon". In the meantime, you can play the excellent demo on Steam.