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What Is Hopetown? Inside the Disco Elysium Spiritual Successor

Longdue’s unreleased RPG Hopetown raised £147,311 from 3,355 Kickstarter backers. Here’s what the game is, how it connects to Disco Elysium, and what platforms are planned.
From TheFinanceBase Team4 min to read
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Hopetown is a story-rich isometric RPG from Longdue Games, built around a journalist investigating a crisis in a mining town. Its Kickstarter campaign ended on April 16, 2025, after raising £147,311 from 3,355 backers against a £25,000 goal. Longdue calls it a spiritual successor to Disco Elysium in the sense that it pursues psychologically complex storytelling and consequential conversations—not because it continues that game’s setting or story.

What is Hopetown?

Hopetown is Longdue Games’ first project: an isometric role-playing game about a rogue journalist reporting from a town in crisis. The company describes a mining community near collapse, where people have died, others are missing, and mining operations have stopped. The player’s reporting choices shape the story and how people respond.

Steam places the story in New Greenwich, an island town in a world changed by “The Flare,” a coronal mass ejection that destroyed global communications decades earlier. The ensuing era is called “The Hush.” The game’s premise combines an investigation into a local mystery with the wider social and political conditions of this disconnected world. Steam’s Hopetown page describes the setting and gameplay.

Why is it called a Disco Elysium spiritual successor?

The connection is about creative lineage and ambition, not a shared fictional universe. Longdue’s Kickstarter FAQ says the project is not specifically honoring one game. Instead, it names qualities associated with Disco Elysium: psychological complexity, intelligent storytelling, rich interiority, and consequential conversations. Four members of the Disco Elysium writing team contributed to Hopetown, according to the FAQ. Read Longdue’s Kickstarter FAQ.

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#1 Best Overall
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut - Xbox One
  • Disco Elysium - The Final Cut is the definitive edition of the groundbreaking role playing game
  • Interrogate unforgettable characters, crack murders, or take bribes
  • Become a hero or an absolute disaster of a human being - it's all up to you
  • Countless tools for roleplaying, a revolutionary dialog system, and an unprecedented freedom of choice found in the base game
  • Adds new quests, and for the first time is fully voice acted

That makes “spiritual successor” a useful description of the intended narrative tradition, but not a guarantee that the finished game will play or feel like Disco Elysium. It remains an unreleased project, so its realized dialogue, systems, and overall quality cannot yet be judged from a playable release.

How much did Hopetown raise on Kickstarter?

The campaign ran from March 17 to April 16, 2025. Kickstarter records show that Longdue raised £147,311 from 3,355 backers, surpassing its £25,000 goal. The campaign has ended; these are its final campaign figures, not a current funding target or a recurring source of support. See the ended Kickstarter campaign.

How do the writing and investigation work?

The central choice is not just what to investigate, but how to turn information into a public story. Steam describes three writing styles—investigative, sensationalist, and vogue—that shape the journalist’s approach. Longdue’s site also points to paths such as gonzo journalism, conspiratorial manipulation, and calculated investigation.

Players are expected to gather evidence, interview people, take photographs, record notebook observations, and navigate branching dialogue. Published words can affect characters and factions in a politically charged open world. The project’s psychogeography system is described as using emotions, memories, conversations, and relationships to unlock doors, change landscapes, and alter social outcomes. These are the developers’ descriptions of planned systems, not confirmation of how they work in a released game. Steam’s overview outlines the investigation and psychogeography mechanics.

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Who from the Disco Elysium team is involved?

Steam names Martin Luiga, Veljo Hagu, Olga Moskvina, Piotr Sobolewski, and Lenval Brown among Hopetown’s creators. Longdue highlights contributions from Luiga and Sobolewski, while the Kickstarter FAQ says four members of the Disco Elysium writing team contributed.

  • Martin Luiga: Longdue identifies him as a founding member of the ZA/UM Cultural Association and a writer of seven characters in Disco Elysium. He said he was sharing his experience to help shape Hopetown’s narrative and systems.
  • Piotr Sobolewski: He said he oversaw a team of 15 credited with “saving” Disco Elysium, which worked on it for nearly six years before and after release.

These are specific contributors and credits, not evidence that the original Disco Elysium studio or full development team has reunited. Longdue’s official site provides the studio’s descriptions and quotes.

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When and where can you play Hopetown?

As of the information on Steam, Hopetown is not available and its release date is to be announced. Longdue’s Kickstarter FAQ identifies PC as the main development platform and lists PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S as planned. Mac, Linux, and other consoles are aspirations, not confirmed launch platforms.

Platform or feature Status stated by Longdue or Steam
PC Main development platform, according to Longdue’s Kickstarter FAQ
PlayStation 5 Planned, according to Longdue’s Kickstarter FAQ
Xbox Series X/S Planned, according to Longdue’s Kickstarter FAQ
Mac, Linux, and other consoles Aspirational; not confirmed as launch platforms, according to Longdue’s Kickstarter FAQ
Release date and availability To be announced; not yet available, according to Steam

The FAQ says the game is being made in Unity. Planned launch languages are English, Russian, and Simplified Chinese; French, Italian, German, and Spanish are hoped for later. Voice acting is planned, and the FAQ says additional funding could expand its scope. These are development plans, not guarantees about the final release. Longdue’s FAQ gives the platform, engine, language, and voice-acting details; Steam lists release status.

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What did Longdue say about the legal dispute?

In its Kickstarter FAQ, Longdue says a court ordered a former team member not to use confidential information about Hopetown for a venture until early 2025, following a contract dispute. That description is Longdue’s account of the dispute and the order; it should not be read as an independently established account of every aspect of the disagreement. The FAQ is Longdue’s source for this claim.

Quick Recap

Bestseller No. 1
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut - Xbox One
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut - Xbox One
Interrogate unforgettable characters, crack murders, or take bribes; Become a hero or an absolute disaster of a human being - it's all up to you
$37.98
Bestseller No. 2
Bestseller No. 5

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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