Hopetown Drops Art Update at Choices Matter Fest: Fake Journalism Reshapes World
Longdue Games has released a new art announcement trailer for Hopetown, timed to the studio’s participation in Telltale’s inaugural Choices Matter Festival on Steam — and it arrives as the clearest articulation yet of what makes this particular Disco Elysium spiritual successor unlike the others: in Hopetown, a player who fabricates their journalism gets the same world-changing response as one who tells the truth.
The visual overhaul shown in the trailer is real and striking. Longdue has put the game’s world through a significant refresh of atmospheric lighting, textures, and environmental depth, and posted a before-and-after video to its Steam community page to demonstrate the changes. But the art update is the occasion, not the story. The story is the publication system underneath it, and what it is actually asking players to do with it.
What the Game Is About
You play as a journalist on the island of Entre — specifically in New Greenwich, a rain-battered mining town that has become the center of something no one will talk about clearly. Five days ago, something happened: miners disappeared, deaths occurred, and the flow of Quicksilver stopped. Quicksilver is the substance that, in Hopetown’s post-Flare world, re-enabled long-distance communication after a coronal mass ejection destroyed global electronics decades ago — making whoever controls it effectively the most powerful faction on the island.
Your journalist is not a neutral observer. According to the game’s Kickstarter campaign page, they are the exiled middle child of one of the world’s richest men, sent here under murky circumstances, with one stated mission and, presumably, a more complicated actual one. The emotional register is dark, cynical, and surreal — a world where information became power when electronics stopped working, and where the arrival of Quicksilver has set the island’s factions against each other: the Betweeners (the mine laborers), the De Luna Corporation (which controls Quicksilver and is attempting to impose “The Alignment,” a new political system), and the Postmasters (the elite order that maintained communications through the chaos).
The companion you begin with is an idealistic photographer committed, specifically and inconveniently, to the truth. If you choose to fabricate evidence, they will object. According to Hopetown’s Steam store page, playing a journalist who fakes their reporting may require recruiting a different companion — one “whose hands are firmly planted in the dirt.”
The Journalism System Is the Mechanic That Matters
Hopetown gives players three distinct journalism classes: Correspondent, Columnist, or Gonzo. Each shapes how dialogue is approached, how interviews are conducted, and what writing style is applied when the story is published. The investigative loop has three steps: gather material (interviews, photographs, observations written in a notebook), choose what to present, and publish.
What makes the system unusual is that step two is genuinely optional when it comes to the truth. As the Steam page states directly: players can “dust off an old photo and make up a quote if you think a lie will sell better.” The published story then triggers what Longdue calls Psychogeography — a world-response mechanic in which factions, characters, and the environment react to the story as published, regardless of whether it is accurate. Fake journalism reshapes the island with the same structural force as truthful journalism.
Twenty-one skills, attached to seven personas — Nobody, Abacus, Journo, Animal, Fashionista, Huntress, and a secret seventh — shape what can be observed, who can be persuaded, and what investigative methods are available.
What “Psychogeography” Actually Means
Longdue did not coin the term. Psychogeography was defined by Guy Debord in a 1955 essay for the Letterist International as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” Debord developed it into a full theoretical framework through the Situationist International — the avant-garde collective that influenced the Paris uprisings of 1968 — with the concept of the dérive (an unplanned drift through urban space to discover how geography affects mood and behavior) as its primary practice.
Longdue’s narrative director Grant Roberts has acknowledged the naming is deliberate, and slightly self-amused. Roberts noted in a Kickstarter campaign interview: “Psychogeography is also the longest name for a system that I’ve encountered in 25 years of game development so we’re proud of that one.”
The Situationist connection goes deeper than naming. One of Debord’s key concepts was détournement — the reappropriation of existing cultural forms to subvert their intended meaning, turning a tool of the spectacle against itself. Encoding the ability to publish fabricated journalism within a game about a journalist is détournement as a mechanic: the player can produce the spectacle, subvert it, or — most pointedly — reproduce it exactly while calling it investigation. That the game was named after this tradition, and that it explicitly allows players to participate in the production of false narrative, is not coincidence.
Who Built This Game
The team assembled at Longdue — whose official studio website lists the full roster — is unusually credentialed for an indie studio. The core lineup includes Martin Luiga (ZA/UM co-founder and writer of multiple Disco Elysium characters), Veljo Hagu (the first Unity developer hired on Disco Elysium, responsible for its skill system), Piotr Sobolewski (technical lead, previously CEO of Knights of Unity, which oversaw Disco Elysium’s technical development), Lenval Brown (narrator of Disco Elysium), and Astri Lohne (art director, previously with Blizzard, Wizards of the Coast, and Sharkmob). The team’s full credentials were detailed following the May 2026 gameplay announcement.
In May 2026, Longdue announced that Olga Moskvina had joined the team. Moskvina wrote Ruby, Bird’s Nest Roy, and other Disco Elysium characters, and was responsible for final language polish across the entire game — the editorial layer that made Disco Elysium’s prose as precise as it is strange. Martin Luiga’s statement on the hire, published by Gematsu: “Her proficiencies as both a writer and editor are likely to get us to a level of polish befitting our audience, as evidenced by her undeniable contributions to Disco Elysium.”
Rounding out the team: science-fiction and western novelist Stark Holborn, lead writer on detective adventure Shadows of Doubt and contributor to Nivalis, and Ben Babbitt, one of the trio of developers behind Kentucky Route Zero. Composer Paweł Błaszczak, known for his work on The Witcher and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, was secured through a stretch goal.
The Kickstarter and What It Proved
The Hopetown Kickstarter — which aimed for £25,000 (approximately $32,000) — was funded in its first three hours and closed at 450% of its original target, raising approximately $149,434 (£112,688). The final funding represented not just financial validation but editorial validation: the team showed the journalism fabrication mechanic, the psychogeography system, and the morally ambiguous protagonist in the campaign video, and backers still funded it at four-and-a-half times the goal.
That crowdfunding success matters for a mechanic like truth fabrication. A commercial publisher might reasonably push back on a feature that actively encourages players to deceive the game’s NPCs — the potential for negative press coverage writing itself. The Kickstarter model removed that risk. The mechanic stayed.
The Festival and What It Signals
Telltale’s inaugural Choices Matter Festival runs on Steam through August 17, bringing together over 90 titles with branching storylines, more than 40 playable demos, and developer commentary. Hopetown’s participation positions it alongside established games in the choices-matter genre while still unreleased — an unusual slot that functions primarily as extended visibility for a game that has no firm release date yet and is currently only available to wishlist.
The art overhaul itself is substantial enough to matter as a standalone development update. Lighting and texture work in an isometric CRPG is not cosmetic in the way a character skin might be — it shapes how readable dialogue scenes are, how atmospheric the environment feels during long investigative sessions, and whether the world looks like it has the visual weight to support the emotional register the writing is going for. The before-and-after content Longdue posted suggests the changes are meaningful.
Hopetown is currently in development for Windows PC. A targeted release date of December 2028 was cited in early Kickstarter reporting, though no official release date has been confirmed by Longdue. Players can wishlist the game now on Steam.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Psychogeography in Hopetown, and does it mean my choices actually change the game world?
Psychogeography is the name Longdue gives to the system by which published stories affect the island of Entre — its factions, characters, and political landscape. The term comes from Situationist theorist Guy Debord’s 1955 concept of how geography shapes emotion and behavior. In Hopetown’s implementation, the key detail is that the world responds to what you publish, not to what is true. If you fabricate your journalism — fake a photograph, invent a quote — and publish it, the Psychogeography system treats the fabrication as fact. Factions and characters react to the published story, not to the underlying reality. That is a meaningfully different design choice from systems that track your “good” and “bad” decisions; here, the epistemic act of publication is what carries weight.
What is Hopetown’s relationship to Disco Elysium — is it a sequel, a spinoff, or something else?
Hopetown is a completely separate game set in an original world with no connection to Disco Elysium’s Revachol setting. What it shares is personnel: Martin Luiga (ZA/UM co-founder and Disco Elysium writer), Olga Moskvina (Disco Elysium writer and language editor), Veljo Hagu (Disco Elysium’s first software developer), Piotr Sobolewski (Disco Elysium technical lead), and Lenval Brown (Disco Elysium narrator) are all on the Longdue development team. The game’s design — isometric, dialogue-heavy, skill-based, morally open — shares clear lineage with Disco Elysium, but it is the design tradition these developers built together, applied to a new world. The legal rights to Disco Elysium’s setting and story belong to ZA/UM, which is a separate and differently-led studio. Longdue is not affiliated with current ZA/UM.
Can I play as a truthful journalist, or does the game force moral compromise?
Both approaches are structurally supported. The game’s Correspondent class in particular is described as investigative and precise — a player who wants to expose what actually happened in New Greenwich has the tools to do so. What the design does not do is reward honesty automatically — the Psychogeography system responds to the story you publish regardless of its accuracy. Your idealistic photographer companion will object to fabrication, which creates a companion-relationship consequence for dishonesty, but it does not block the mechanic. The game appears to be asking players to decide what kind of journalist they want to be — and then live with what that journalism does to the island.
When does Hopetown come out and what platforms will it be on?
No official release date has been confirmed. Early reporting from the March 2025 Kickstarter referenced December 2028 as a development target. Hopetown is confirmed for Windows PC via Steam. Console platforms have not been officially confirmed on the Steam page as of publication. Players can add it to their Steam wishlist to receive updates.