I can’t find a better game to launch our new series than Hopetown. Swine Daily team is thrilled to announce that from now on, we will be covering not only music and visual art, but also an art form that combines both. Games. We will focus on games with strong, distinctive visual art, a unique and complex soundtrack, and an original narration style.
The first interview in the series is with Martin Luiga, former writer on Disco Elysium and Narrative Lead on Hopetown at Longdue Games. I’m sure Swine Daily readers are familiar with the new indie classic, Disco Elysium. The original team behind the game has divided into several new game studios. Longdue Games, Dark Math Games, Summer Eternal, and Red Info Ltd. After completing their goal on the crowdfunding portal Kickstarter, Hopetown by Longdue Games will be perhaps the first one.
Visuals from Hopetown promo, illustrated by: Astri Lohne
Who are Longdue Games? On their website, we can see that the studio labels them as a brand new independent RPG studio, embarking on a new journey. „We are going to be a flagship force in the world of agency-driven storytelling – and we can’t wait to reveal what we have in store for you.“ They will focus on narrative-first, psychologically deep RPGs. Which, especially after the success of Disco Elysium, might be a new booming genre of indie games.
Let’s get to Hopetown, as from the first screenshots and description, it sounds just excellent. One of the reasons why we couldn’t find a better game to write about is that in Hopetown, you will play as a former journalist. You will investigate a town, as well as your own psyché. This isometric CRPG is inspired by Disco Elysium, Kentucky Route Zero, Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights, Pillars of Eternity, and Divinity: Original Sin. And is being built by some of the key talent behind these games, such as Martin Luiga – founder of the ZA/UM Cultural Movement and writer of several characters on Disco Elysium, Lenval Brown – the narrator of Disco Elysium, Piotr Sobolewski – oversaw all technical development on Disco Elysium as CEO of the Knights of U, Ben Babbitt – one of the trio of game developers that created Kentucky Route Zero, and Paweł Blaszczak, music composer on the original soundtracks of The Witcher & The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
From the press release, we can read:
It’s a game about exploration, conversation, and excavation — in the world and in your mind. You won’t roll dice to see if you hit with your magical blade; you’ll use words like daggers, finding the weak spots in your target’s armor. You won’t have a tank, healer, or crowd control in your adventuring party; but the voices in your head, and companions at your side, will fight with you and against you all the same. You’ll reach the darkest depths of the soul and the brightest zeniths of human connection.
Visuals from Hopetown promo, illustrated by: Astri Lohne
It is not just a former journalist reporting and investigating in the „real world“. The Hopetown world is set in a dystopic future, where a huge solar flare and a geomagnetic storm wiped out electronics and global communications „for what felt like years“. And with no salvation to be found in the skies, „humanity looked under its feet: a resurgence of mining swept the globe.“
And here comes the main character. „Middle child of one of the richest men on the planet. You’ve drifted through life knowing only luxury and power, shielded by privilege and surrounded by sycophants. Your stiletto wit and sandpaper charm have kept everyone at arm’s length, except others as insufferable as you.
So here you are, exiled by your family after yet another scandal. You’ve just stepped off an impossibly long train ride, wheeling an overpriced suitcase across the muddy cobblestone and nursing a four-star hangover. Your mission, or punishment, seems simple enough: figure out what happened, cover it up, and spin a better story. You’re a journalist, after all,“ writes in the official promo text.
The game developers used the feature of „Psychogeography“. It was described by Guy Debord as „the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.“ It was developed by members of the Letterist International and Situationist International, which were revolutionary groups influenced by Marxist and anarchist theory as well as the attitudes and methods of Dadaists and Surrealists.
„In Hopetown, the actions you take, the friendships you make and destroy, the change you bring — these things don’t just live in your head, trapped in consciousness and fading into memory. They take shape in the physical world around you, real in every sense of the word. Just like the connection between you and your environment.
Choose to help someone or hurt them, and new paths will open and close. Residents will be in different places over the course of their days and their stories, and will react in new ways according to where you speak to them.“
And now, check out our email interview with Martin Luiga, former writer on Disco Elysium and Narrative Lead on Hopetown ➜
✱ Disco Elysium was kind of Opus Magnum. Really a multi-layered, brilliant piece of art. I’m wondering how to continue from this, with a new game. Are there some core concepts of the D.E. that you are developing in Hopetown?
The core development brought to the RPG genre by DE was firstly the skill system, and then it being a low-violence (a rather realistic violence level) comedy – while I think any past major RPG has had jokes in it, you would call none of them a comedy as such.
Disco Elysium, of course, works as a comedy because it is more than that; oftentimes, the comedy is borne precisely out of the seriousness of the situation and the state of the world. This kind of game is also naturally a vehicle for various kinds of political or social commentary. In short, I think it is possible to make rather different games following from the same general structure or genre, just as the original Baldur’s Gate series was rather different from Planescape: Torment, although they both used the second edition DnD skillset as their base system. Also, Disco Elysium has opened up a series of intellectual conversations in a certain genre, which I think are only waiting to be continued in a game like Hopetown.
✱ What is the process of building a game like Hopetown? First is world-building and story creation? You are basically starting with the text script? Or visual parts of the game, characters, and the story being developed in parallel?
One can imagine several ways of going about it, but for Hopetown, the text, the skills, the characters, and the world are being developed in parallel. There is a lot of testing being done to see what works best for the story we want to tell.
✱ I love how you incorporated gonzo journalism into the game. I’m personally a big fan of Hunter S. Thompson and his style of reporting. I think there is a lot to explore in this style of writing. Did you have some other inspirations when creating the main character of Hopetown? Will the players use gonzo writing in the game?
Currently, we plan to make use of every journalistic style that was showcased in the early promotional materials. The main character is in part inspired by the Succession series and the Terry Pratchett book ‘The Truth’.
✱ In 1955, Guy Debord defined psychogeography as „the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.“ Are you inspired by the movement or some specific historical figures?
The idea of having psychogeography in the game is older than me being on board, but yes, I do think it is a Debord-inspired idea. I myself would like to integrate Lacanian psychoanalysis into the game, though this needs in no way be explicit; in fact, in my opinion, one of the main themes in Disco Elysium was a Lacanian one, namely that politics is a distraction or ‘cope’ relative to the real battlefield, which is the woman.
✱ On what stage of the game development are you right now, and when can we expect the game to be released?
We are currently iterating on versions of our prototype and cannot yet comment on the release date, beyond saying that we plan to take less time in making Hopetown than was spent on making Disco.
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Interview: Krištof Budke / For more updates, check out Longdue Games‘ website
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