One of the numerous Disco Elysium spiritual successors currently in development has undergone significant changes – it's been given a new, arguably stranger name, and a shift away from the isometric gameplay that made it feel even more like ZA/UM's groundbreaking RPG.
The game in question, originally known as XXX Nightshift, comes from Dark Math Games – a studio formed of a number of former ZA/UM developers, and not to be confused with Longdue Games, another studio with former ZA/UM developers working on their own spiritual successor to Disco Elysium called Hopetown. Which also isn't to be confused with the next RPG from ZA/UM itself, formerly known as Project C4 but now revealed to be called Zero Parades.
Considering that the two new studios announced their projects on the exact same day, and with an additional trailer for Hopetown later released on the same day as one for what was then Project C4… yeah, it'd be understandable if you were struggling to keep up. I can't imagine that XXX Nightshift's name change is going to help matters, either.
Announced today, the upcoming detective RPG is now called Tangerine Antarctic, which might initially sound like the devs flipped through a dictionary and picked out a couple of random words, but as explained by the founder and art director of Dark Math Games Timo Albert, "Tangerine Antarctic is the name of the in-game hotel" at the "World's End ski village at Mount Hope, British Antarctica," where we can expect most of the game to take place.
"This is where you are stuck because of the blizzard and must solve the mysterious murders," Albert adds. "And Tangerine Antarctic is one of the important characters of this true detective's RPG."
On top of that, Dark Math Games is leaving Tangerine Antarctic's isometric gameplay in the past as it becomes a third-person RPG, instead. Looking at the updated screenshots, it immediately feels less Disco Elysium-like – something which might be good news for the devs if they're trying to distinguish their own game from ZA/UM's past work, but it's not necessarily a selling point for anyone just hoping to play another game like Disco Elysium.
There's still no release window for Tangerine Antarctic at the time of writing, but it'll be interesting to see how it shapes up compared to Disco Elysium and the other two rival successors when they launch.
In the meantime, be sure to keep up with our roundup of new games to see what other releases are around the corner.
