You’ll have to fight fires, start fires and move fires, both literally and figuratively, in Red Rooster – the debut title from ex-ZA/UM studio, Summer Eternal.
By my calculations there were five collectives left after the messy disembowelment of ZA/UM. But, the thing with disembowelment is that there’s no guarantee that you can actually recognise any of the various parts once the job is done. Due to the massive success of Disco Elysium there was a bit of an assumption that each one of this fistful of studios would attempt to rebottle the lightning and create a successor, however, as time passes and we learn more about them, it turns out that most are instead pursuing design evolution and revolution within their space. Summer Eternal have, through their recently released, self-titled anthology, revealed details about theirs: Red Rooster.
Red Rooster is an “incendiary RPG” with Imm-Sim values
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Some background, on the studio first. Summer Eternal officially revealed themselves two years ago. They launched with a manifesto-like declaration underlining their core tenets of worker rights and worker (and player) ownership. Whether you agree with their missives and delivery, they counted among them over half a dozen recognisable veterans from ZA/UM and their messaging clearly underlined that they have zero intention to ever follow in the footprints of the corporate butchery that surrounded the gutting of their previous workplace. It’s been quiet since then, but they’ve recently followed up with the previously mentioned Sumer Eternal Anthology, a 500-page wedge of a book containing interviews, ideological prose, development notes and an outline for Red Rooster.
Red Rooster puts you into the shoes of Redrick Roost, a prison inmate who is enlisted to find a pattern between a spate of arson attacks that have terrorised the tri-partie city of Arta-Tantor. Things are made complex early on as it turns out that the prime suspect is Redrick’s own brother, who happens to be the city’s fire chief. Redrick isn’t alone in their efforts though, they’re paired off with Astrid, an opioid-hooked mathematician who will no-doubt offer up a fun twist on traditional deduction.
Red Rooster is an “incendiary RPG” with Imm-Sim values
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However, from that description alone it could be easily assumed that we’re still talking about a Disco Elysium successor, and that’s not what Summer Eternal are trying to do – they’re set on innovation. While the world is no-doubt full of high tension and danger, here there are two major changes. Firstly, Arta-Tantor’s archipelago is dynamic – not as in it’s a living, breathing city, but as in the world isn’t static, with characters simply waiting around to talk to you, or for you to enter their lives. Secondly, Redrick has a degree of control over the fires, and more, as Red Rooster features a fully physics-driven engine. This means that you can push and move objects, manipulate them and – as you might have gathered from the theme – burn them. We’re very much looking at an immersive-sim in an emergent world, rather than a series of interaction points around largely static scenes.
Delightfully, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (a personal favourites) makes an appearance in their inspirations list, alongside the likes of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Planescape: Torment, Deus Ex and Larian’s Divinity-engine games. In one way or another these all challenged major conventions about either interactions, balance or story-telling… and it makes for a strong message about Summer Eternal’s ambitions for Red Rooster.
You can pick up a copy of the Summer Eternal Anthology on the developer’s official website. In keeping with their mission, you can then opt into the the Players Non-Profit organisation that controls 5% of the studio’s profits. Red Rooster doesn’t currently have a release date, however it will release for PC when it’s ready.
