Zero Parades: For Dead Spies Studio ZA/UM is “Less Interested in Arguing We’re Capable of Making a Good Game Than in Just Making One”

Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM has a lot on its shoulders. There's controversy around the departure of some of its most prominent creatives that won't be going away anytime soon, especially as the current litigation around the situation continues. But the developers remaining at the studio have no control over that.

What they do have control over is their jobs and the work they're doing right now on the studio's next game, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, an espionage-focused narrative adventure that, at first glance is immediately recognizable as a ZA/UM game.

There are definitely people who would dispute Zero Parades legitimacy as a ZA/UM game, since even its most mundane social media posts include at least one commenter telling the studio to 'give the Disco Elysium IP back to its original creators,' and trailers for Zero Parades that lead with statements like "We brought you Disco Elysium" include comments claiming that to be false.

As if the studio is nothing without Robert Kurvitz, Helen Hindpere, Argo Tuulik, Martin Luiga, Olga Moskvina, Cash Decuir, and Märten Rattasepp, the people credited as the core writing team for Disco Elysium, all of whom are no longer at the studio, some of them leaving in more unsavory ways than others.

But to try and argue that Disco Elysium's creators are gone from ZA/UM runs into a common problem we have with the perception of who is actually behind the video games we love. No game is made entirely by one person. You can't give all the credit for Metal Gear Solid solely to Hideo Kojima, just like you can't give all the credit for The Last of Us to Neil Druckmann, because it erases the efforts of the team surrounding them, all of whom had a part in making those games as iconic as they are.

Even a famous solo dev like Stardew Valley's Eric Barone could not have created his beloved farming sim without help. No one is trying to diminish the contributions made by those people whose names are given top billing, but to believe it was all up to them is wholly false. Game development is almost always a collective work, with artists and creatives across disciplines coming together to work towards a shared goal.

Jim Ashilevi, VO director and writer for Zero Parades, has been with ZA/UM since its earliest days as a small art collective, which of course includes working on Disco Elysium. Siim "Kosmos" Sinamäe, who you'll hear from in this interview, was a producer and writer for Disco Elysium. Every ZA/UM game going forward may not be from all of the people who brought you Disco Elysium, but it absolutely is from the people who brought you Disco Elysium.

Zero Parades: For Dead Spies is the studio's first chance to try and move on from the controversy that stains its past, and when I asked writer Honey Watson and principal writer Siim "Kosmos" Sinamäe about the comments on everything ZA/UM dares to post online, Watson's answer was, for me, exactly the tone I'd like to see from the studio. A clear focus on what they can control, and a desire to get on with the work.

For more on Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, you can check out my two previous previews, one from a hands-off session back in September 2025, and the other from last month's Steam Next Fest, where I shared my thoughts after spending an extended time playing through the game's demo (which, by popular demand, has been made available through to April 13, 2026, so you still have time to play it yourself).

Firstly, congratulations on having a demo ready for Steam Next Fest. How does it feel to have a version of the game that fans can play out in the wild? What has the response been like for you?

Siim "Kosmos" Sinamäe: It feels excellent. We’re extremely grateful to everyone who has played and shared their experience with us as we’ve been putting a lot of love into this game over these last couple of years.

I was lucky enough to be included in the group of press that got to check out Zero Parades back in September 2025, and hear from Jim Ashilevi and Jess Crawford about the game. In the preview I wrote then, and in my hands-on preview now, I wrote about the pressure that Zero Parades carries as the next title from ZA/UM post Disco Elysium. Do you feel that pressure more now, the closer we get to release? How has it manifested among the team/impacted Zero Parades' development?

Honey Watson: There’s a lot of pressure involved with releasing any creative project. We’re a close team and we draw a lot of energy from that. I think it gives us a form of performance excitement rather than performance anxiety.

I have to admit, I was extremely taken aback by how impactful the Dramatic Encounter at the end of the demo was, after being skeptical about them when I first learned about them last September. Are all (or most) of the game's Dramatic Encounters centred around close getaways? Can you share how many of them are included in the game without spoiling anything?

SKS: We have different types of dramatic encounters dictated by the needs of the story and what we think the players would find exhilarating. But I won’t spoil them!

HW: We’re so glad you enjoyed it! Dramatic encounters are a new mechanic for particularly action heavy, tense moments in the game. They’ll happen in a variety of settings for a variety of reasons, you won’t always see them coming. Also, you can still utterly fail these encounters and not expect to get stuck in the game. Some of you will just be shit spies I’m afraid.

Excited as I was to play this demo, I was disappointed to see the Conditioning mechanic absent. Why was it missing from this look into the game? Is there a chance we get to try it in a future demo, or is it a feature we'll have to wait to try until the game is out?

HW: Conditioning is very important to us and it needed a bit more work done on it at the time of sending the demo off for submission. We didn’t want to give it to the players in a half-finished state, rather, keep it a pleasant surprise for the full release. Conditioning as a system becomes more useful as the game progresses, so we felt that for the demo, which details the intro of the game, we can leave it out and still have a whole experience in the context of the demo.

Speaking of which, is there an update as to when the game will be out? Will it be aiming for console platforms alongside a PC release?

SKS: Zero Parades will launch this year on PC first. We’ve also announced a release on Playstation later this year. Specific dates are a state secret, though.

The idea of 'embracing failure' was a major takeaway I had from my hands-off preview in September, though in playing the demo, I already began to find ways that felt like I could min/max my way through any meaningful challenge or potential point of failure. Is that actually possible? How are you trying to walk that line between getting players to understand and experience the 'embracing failure' concept and someone being able to quote-unquote 'break' the game?

SKS: For us, failing does not mean breaking the game. As developers, accounting for both success and failure is what makes the game. We walk that line with balance, both metaphorically and literally – failure can be as enticing as success, granted that it is entertaining. People love consequences, they just don’t know it yet.

HW: For the demo we wanted players to be able to get a sense of all the available skills, so a lot of the passive checks were of a lower difficulty than you can expect in the full game. On embracing failure, in Zero Parades failure doesn’t tend to lead to a game over or a dead end but a new route through the game. Be brave, roll the dice, stand by your choices, good or bad. It’s fun to fail!

What do you hope players take away from Zero Parades?

SKS: Don't become the thing you hate.

A quick scroll through comments on ZA/UM social media feeds shows a lot of negativity in the comments, several calling the studio "thieves" or demanding that ZA/UM "give back" Disco Elysium to its original creators. With the understanding that you [as in, the development team on ZERO PARADES] have no control over the controversy that has followed the studio following the departure of several prominent members of the Disco Elysium team, how do you look to reach those who have a soured view of the studio?

HW: We're less interested in arguing that we're capable of making a good game than in just making one.

Do you have a message to players?

HW: We're just very excited to finally get Zero Parades into people's hands. It's been a labour of love for a long time now, and while this is the kind of thing you could and kina want to work on forever, we're at the point where we're eager to start playing and seeing people enjoy what we've made.

Thank you for your time.

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