When ZA/UM, the studio behind Disco Elysium, collapsed, its creative team of misfits, dropouts, dreamers, and radicals all went their separate ways. To date, no fewer than five projects, including Red Rooster, proudly proclaim to home someone who worked on one of the most influential and brilliant games of all time.
My background is straightforward: Disco Elysium is one of my favorite games of all time. It is a watershed moment that helped redefine, contextualize, and clarify what I love in storytelling. I play it at least once a year from beginning to end. My office has a plethora of unauthorized art and swag (sorry, Argo). I even read an unofficial translation of the lost book, Sacred and Terrible Air, which exists in the world of Elysium, simply to live in this melancholy place a little longer.
In short, it matters to me more than I care to admit.
So when I got the chance to dive into Red Rooster, the first project from Summer Eternal, a cooperative studio formed by Argo Tuulik and Dora Klindžić, I didn't hesitate. Over the past couple of weeks, I've poured over the essays, interviews, and design documents within Anthology Volume One, which ships today, October 14th.
The launch is as audacious and ambitious as Summer Eternal itself. Everyone gets the book at the same time, and everyone who buys one becomes part of the 5% shared studio ownership. Summer Eternal says the future is transparent, and, in what reads like a cheeky stab at Disco, "every player – member of the board."
What is Summer Eternal?
Based in Zagreb, Croatia, Summer Eternal is a shareholding company and studio developing Red Rooster. It is also a haven for some, but not all. Like other revolutions with strongly worded manifestos, it operates with enough clarity to understand the Sisyphean task ahead.
Even their declaration of the studio architecture admits as much: "There is no solution. Until constraints of creation under capitalism are rendered obsolete and artistic communes will self-organise without constant fiscal anxiety, workers will be urged to form ways to overcome them - partially, often contradictory, envisioning impossible structures that look like fever dreams from different worlds."
"I believe that the last time around we made something genre-breaking. Discipline-transcending. Something completely new. I am not ready to give up on that."
- Argo Tuulik
In effect, Summer Eternal is a means to an end, ensuring the creatives retain the rights and control of their work. Customers who buy into this dream have a minor say, totaling 5% of the company. Freelancers and other non-full-time workers are part of a secondary co-op with approximately 25% of shares.
Both Volume One and Summer Eternal's website provide a structure chart that looks almost satirical. The labyrinthine structure is a necessity and a curse; not an answer to a societal ill that a single company could solve.
Says Argo Tuulik, writer at Summer Eternal, and one of the masterminds behind Disco Elysium: "I believe that the last time around we made something genre-breaking. Discipline-transcending. Something completely new. I am not ready to give up on that."
The question remains: what is that? The answer: a role-playing game of identity, power structures, and politics told through a magical-realist world of alternate history and sci-fi.
What is Red Rooster?
Red Rooster is a physics-driven role-playing game told from a third-person perspective in the style of Planescape: Torment and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.
Summer Eternal's pitch is as ambitious as their dreams for what the studio will become. Nothing less than a revolution will do. In the first volume, they describe Red Rooster as the "beginning of the future", set in the city of Arta-Tantor in the last days of the longest summer on record. As the 12th triennial Continental Summer Games continue, the city faces unprecedented heatwaves, power outages, and uncontrolled domestic and wildfires.
It is, not to put too fine a point on it, timely.
Our anti-hero is Redrick "Rooster" Roost, a white-collar inmate approaching his parole hearing. Years earlier, he was incarcerated for gross criminal negligence of an auto-medication device that left thousands across the nation catatonic. Approached by a high-ranking government agent before his hearing, Redrick is offered a blanket pardon if he infiltrates a local fire station run by his brother. Accepting the deal, Redrick partners with Dr. Astrid Albers, an opiate-dependent mathematician, as the duo burrows down the rabbit hole of a society they've left behind.
The world of Arta-Tantor exists on the precipice of change and calamity. Fire and combustion built a paradise for some and hell for others, and now threaten to bring it all down. Perhaps in ashes all become equal, and perhaps something larger is at play behind the scenes. After all, nothing moves in the machinery of capitalism without purpose.
Redrick, a survivor of a devastating accident that killed his parents, has crafted an elaborate chicken coop within his mind to survive the mental anguish. His darker aspects exist there, trapped but free-roaming. Perhaps they can be of use.
Around him and Dr. Albers, Arta-Tantor shifts on its axis, and Red Rooster reacts to your choices, whatever they may be.
That's the hook, but what about the facts? Well, Summer Eternal claims Red Rooster will launch as a PC release, with Xbox and PlayStation ports arriving later. They estimate the story will take 25-30 hours to complete, with a word count of 850k words. It is designed in Unreal Engine and is currently in pre-production.
In practice, this means almost all of this can, and most likely will, change. Game development isn't an exact science. Like a painting, it shifts with every new coat.
Anthology Volume One is more comprehensive than most behind-the-scenes books or documentaries on completed projects.
There's little hard material to go on, but that doesn't mean Red Rooster exists only as a fever dream. The first volume is packed with backstory, lore, and a clear vision as tantalizing and fully realised as anything you'd expect from the creators of Disco Elysium. For those coming from the tabletop RPG tradition, it is a goldmine of imagination. A feast of politics, pop culture, sci-fi, and history. A vision of an alternate Europe, where Baltic influences exist in fragile harmony with a fading Belle Époque.
The anthology also includes interviews and essays from noted thinkers, economists, and game designers, including Richard Wolff, Ted Chiang, and BioWare legends Mark Darrah and David Gaider. Like the vision itself, they are a little bit all over the place in scope, big and dreamy on a conceptual level, but also earnest and poignant. It is an enthralling read from cover to cover.
Even if the game never comes out, this material itself is more rewarding and exciting than a hundred finished products. Anyone who loves role-playing games, regardless of their chosen format, should pay attention. There is nothing else like this around for miles.
If you're interested in game design, be that as a hobby or a career, you owe it to yourself to read it. This is a breathtaking glimpse behind the curtain.
In the 250 pages dedicated to Red Rooster, Summer Eternal lays out a compelling blueprint for a game that I can't wait to experience. Everything from early concept art to long, detailed explanations of the narrative tools and mechanics, and even lore dumps about elements we may only glimpse in the final product, is included.
Anthology Volume One is more comprehensive than most behind-the-scenes books or documentaries on completed projects. If you're interested in game design, be that as a hobby or a career, you owe it to yourself to read it. This is a breathtaking glimpse behind the curtain.
And yes, on a crass, commercial level, it is a brilliant advertisement and announcement of a game that's still years away from completion. Just as every production begins with a song-and-dance number for investors, Red Rooster does the same with the promise of a grand revolution.
Will that happen? Probably not. The world is indifferent to idealism. But we're nothing without dreams, especially hopeless ones, and there is nothing more beautiful than a declaration of artistry on this scale.
Whatever happens, will happen, and if we're lucky, we get to be there when it does.
Read more about Summer Eternal, Red Rooster, and order your copy of the first volume here:
