In Oct. 2026, former Disco Elysium team shares Red Rooster, anthology details

In 2024, former Disco Elysium writer Argo Tuulik and ZA/UM veterans Dora Klindžić, Anastasia Ivanova, Michael Oswell, Aleksandar Gavrilović and Lenval Brown founded Summer Eternal.

In October 2026, Summer Eternal approached a reporter to gauge interest in the Summer Eternal Anthology, a 500‑page volume that combines an analysis of the game industry’s cultural and labour issues with a development log for its upcoming incendiary RPG Red Rooster. In Red Rooster players assume the role of Redrick Roost, a white‑collar inmate turned arson investigator who teams up with an opiate‑dependent mathematician to probe a series of fires linked to his brother, the city’s fire chief.

Set in a fractured border archipelago of the three‑part city Arta‑Tantor, the game presents a political alternate history with a strong sci‑fi current. Summer Eternal states that fighting fires reveals the truth of the world. Summer Eternal also says that starting fires uncovers personal truth. The studio calls Red Rooster an incendiary physics‑driven RPG that mixes deep world‑building RPG elements with the DNA of physics‑focused immersive sims.

Summer Eternal notes the game is wholly physics‑driven, letting players move, manipulate and burn objects to influence the world. Unlike typical static RPG maps, Summer Eternal plans to make the urban archipelago of Arta‑Tantor a reactive playground where physical interactivity and evolving human stories arise from scripted and emergent events. Built in Unreal Engine to leverage advanced physics, Red Rooster drops isometric views for a three‑dimensional world that moves with a dynamic camera.

Referencing Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive, Summer Eternal says it aims for a double‑A budget like the small team behind the 2025 hit RPG. Summer Eternal reports Red Rooster is near the end of pre‑production and an internal playable demo exists. The Summer Eternal Anthology contains interviews with economists Yanis Varoufakis and Richard Wolff, a conversation with science‑fiction author Ted Chiang, and talks with BioWare veterans Mark Darrah and David Gaider.

The anthology also features contributions from worker‑run groups UVW‑CWA, Aftermath and Peregrine Coast Press, which the book calls “paper perverts”. The Standard edition of the Summer Eternal Anthology costs €69, while the Deluxe Firestarter bundle costs €99 and includes a vinyl record and extra merchandise. Buyers of the book receive a membership in the Summer Eternal Players Non‑Profit organisation, which holds five percent of Summer Eternal, granting voting rights on studio governance and a say in how five percent of Red Rooster’s future profits are allocated.

Besides Summer Eternal, other studios arising from the former Disco Elysium team are Longdue, an independent studio of former Disco Elysium staff, and Dark Math Games, which labels itself a breakaway group from the original Disco Elysium development team. ZA/UM continued as a development unit, launching Zero Parades: For Dead Spies in June 2026 before laying off a large portion of its remaining staff.

Before the split, former Disco Elysium director Robert Kurvitz and art director Aleksander Rostov accused ZA/UM leadership of fraudulently taking over the studio and its IP, saying they were fired and cut off from their life’s work after asking for financial records from the new owners. Allegations of mismanagement and misconduct were then made in response, heightening the conflict. In a 2024 VG247 feature, game director Argo Tuulick stated he would rather under‑promise and over‑deliver about the game.