Disco (Elysium) Might Be Dead, but Its Devotees Yearn to Return to Revachol

It’s a tricky time to be a fan of Disco Elysium. The original creative team behind the breakout detective roleplaying game has long since imploded and while there’s no shortage of studios out there looking to pitch themselves as the spiritual successor to ZA/UM, it’s unclear how many – if any – of these projects will make it past the finish line let alone live up to the legacy they’re looking to lean on. Making video games is hard, expensive, slow to begin with and even more-so nowadays. 

By comparison, making something designed for tabletop play is a lighter lift. Perhaps it's not so shocking that fans of Disco Elysium have begun to explore this avenue in the absence of an official or unofficial follow-up. Back in 2023, one Spanish fan wrote and released a TTRPG inspired by ZA/UM’s game called Jamais Vu.  

According to this fan, who goes by the online handle Mithrilica, “ZA/UM's design philosophy resonated with the way I felt about the CRPG scene at the time. Then I played the game on release and I fell in love with it, though it felt different than what I had imagined.”

Meli and Pedro discovered Disco Elysium around that same time. The couple – who have been married for 17 years – first learned about the game through People Make Games’ divisive video doco.

“The whole case seemed very interesting to us and caught our attention so much that we decided to try the game. When we played it, we were amazed, not only by the game itself but also by the story and the conflict surrounding it,” they told me via email.

“So much so that we even read the book that served as the foundation for the video game,” they said, referring to Robert Kurvitz's novel A Sacred And Terrible Air.

Like many fans, Meli and Pedro found themselves fascinated by Disco Elysium’s unique setting.

“Expanding on that, we think what resonated with us the most was knowing that the game had a lot of depth in terms of narrative and storytelling. It also featured political content, social critique, and a touch of dark humour, all things that we knew we’d love, and we did,” they told me.

Both Meli and Pedro are avid readers and they quickly embarked on their own separate playthroughs, stopping to compare how their divergent decisions shaped the story. 

“Coming from a third-world country, we also felt that Disco Elysium resonated with us in an identity-driven way. The setting and characters, many of whom are outcasts with voices and stories to tell, felt relatable and authentic,” they said.

Entranced by the melancholic district of Martinaise, the pair were hardly alone in wanting to extend that experience through creating something of their own. However, Meli and Pedro’s contribution to the Disco Elysium fandom would be something a little different to the usual fanart or fan-fiction. It would take the form of a competitive card game called Echoes of Revachol. For the pair, this project started as something personal. Meli and Pedro wanted a Disco Elysium board game they could play together and no such product existed. 

Released online in late 2024, Echoes of Revachol is a multiplayer card game where players take on the role of detectives looking to solve a case before their rivals. In it, you recruit allies and roll dice to assemble corps and solve tasks. The first player to complete the most tasks by the end of the game wins. It’s a simple setup, but one with plenty of room for depth and interlocking mechanics. 

While neither Meli and Pedro had ever designed a card game before, the pair had played a lot of them over the years. The list of their favorites includes Lords of Waterdeep, The Fellowship of the Ring Saga Expansion (Card Game), Arkham Horror, Runebound, Atmosfear, Carcassonne, and El Truco. 

However, when it came to Echoes of Revachol, the pair cited Andreas Zimmermann’s The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth card game as a specific inspiration.

“When we played it, we realized that its simple mechanics fit perfectly with the idea we had in mind: detectives needing to complete tasks with the help of various characters from the Disco Elysium universe,” they said.

According to Meli and Pedro, the new ideas that naturally emerged over the course of Echoes of Revachol’s development allowed them to introduce new mechanics that better captured the spirit of the source material. The most obvious example of this is the morale loss system, which sees players roll dice to avoid negative effects. 

In a bid to make the project as accessible to as many people as possible, Echoes of Revachol’s creators have published not only the files needed to print and play it but also a guide to getting yourself a set of physical cards using third parties like MakePlayingCards.com. 

In the months since sharing it with other fans on reddit, Meli and Pedro have been taken aback by the level of response they’ve received from other fans keen to offer suggestions and support for the project. 

“Many fans started asking us for the files or wondering if there was a way to buy the game. Obviously, since we didn’t have the rights to commercialize it, we never considered selling it. But we thought it would be appropriate to offer it for free to other fans who, like us, wanted to keep enjoying the Disco Elysium universe,” they said.

Thanks to those fans, Echoes of Revachol is now available to play through Tabletop Simulator as are translations of the game’s rules for Spanish, Turkish and Russian languages.

Pedro and Meli admitted that it’s difficult to know when to consider a project like this one finished. 

Initially, the couple had settled on a specific number of cards they wanted to produce in order to keep the scope of the work achievable. However, in doing so, they had to cut out many characters, tasks and other elements from the source material that they would have loved to include. 

“Coming from a third-world country, we also felt that Disco Elysium resonated with us in an identity-driven way. The setting and characters, many of whom are outcasts with voices and stories to tell, felt relatable and authentic."

Meli and Pedro
Creators, Echoes of Revachol

Given the overwhelmingly positive fan response to Echoes of Revachol, it’s hardly a shock that the pair now say that they would like to add and further improve the game in the future. 

“Of course, this would be a lot of work, and since we both have other jobs and this was just a personal project we created for fun, we’ll work on it whenever we have the time to dedicate the effort it needs,” they said.

Even if they don’t end up following through on that stretch goal, Meli and Pedro’s original mission has long since been accomplished. As more and “Disco Elysium-likes” rise up like Kryptonians after the Death of Superman, Echoes of Revachol feels like something different and yet also familiar. It isn’t Disco Elysium 2 but it’s more than just something to tide you over in the meantime. 

Where its inspiration was a solitaire affair, Echoes of Revachol is a rallying cry for read-along revolutionaries mourning the future of the series. One name might be attributed to the creation of Disco Elysium’s world but it takes the toil of many to push back and keep that memory alive, even if it now only exists as an echo.