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"

In 2024, a new game studio called Summer Eternal emerged, formed by former ZA/UM staff members including Argo Tuulik, Dora Klindžić, Anastasia Ivanova, Michael Oswell, Aleksandar Gavrilović, and Lenval Brown. They have been working on an incendiary RPG called Red Rooster, which is not meant to be a successor to Disco Elysium. The game is set in a fractalised border archipelago of the city of Arta-Tantor and involves an arson investigator and a mathematician who are partners.

Red Rooster is a physics-driven RPG with a strong science-fiction element, allowing players to exert their physical existence on the world by moving, manipulating, and burning objects. The developers aim to create a reactive playground of physical interactivity and evolving human stories through scripted and emergent events. The game is being developed in Unreal Engine and will feature a three-dimensional world with dynamic camera movement.

The studio is aiming for a double-A production budget and is nearing the end of pre-production with an existing internal playable tech demo. The announcement of the game comes in the form of a 500-page physical book titled the Summer Eternal Anthology, which includes various interviews, discussions about the state of games and tech, and stories from worker-run organizations.