Disco Elysium Mobile Impressions — ZA/UM's zombified remains...deliver?

ZA/UM’s Disco Elysium is a masterpiece that was effectively stolen by shady businessmen and is now paraded around as an orphaned IP, out of the hands of the writers and developers who poured their souls into the game. Of course, it must be mentioned that Robert Kurvitz, the game’s lead designer and writer, is incredibly difficult to work with and was probably unfit to lead a project of this caliber. It’s hard to know who to root for in this legal debacle that has become as infamous as the game is famous. ZA/UM has, as of this moment, cancelled all of its ongoing projects that had previously been announced (though multiple studios made from ZA/UM’s wreckage have announced new projects). Reality is looking bleaker than Revachol. 

With all that as context, it’s so, so easy to be cynical about a mobile port of one of the most influential games of the past decade, and I’ll admit that part of my enthusiasm towards reviewing this game came from the opportunity to tear it apart. But, well, this port pushed back against my partiality and came out shockingly, dare I say impressively, uncontroversial. 

Disco Elysium Mobile - which is somewhat misleadingly called Disco Elysium if you’re trying to find it in your app store - is not quite a direct port of the original 2019 release. This is a reimagining of sorts; a collection of scenes shoved rather gracefully into a more linear version of the story we know and love. The voice acting added in the Final Cut update remains, and as someone who only played through the game’s original largely voiceless version, it was welcome to listen to the characters the whole way through. 

The game has been streamlined significantly, cutting down on the RPG elements and instead focusing more on dialogue choices. For a mobile port, I can’t argue that this wasn’t the right call. The vertical orientation and the now chapter-based delineation of its plot make the game perfect for, as ZA/UM would put it, “[captivating] the TikTok user”. As much as that miserable quote elicits a collective groan…I did find myself playing in short bursts, as intended. Perhaps I’m part of the problem, or perhaps Disco Elysium fits unsettlingly well into this structure, casting more of a light on its writing and art than its systems. 

The biggest visual change made is the game’s perspective: rather than a top-down isometric view, the mobile version shifts to a panoramic, intimate lens to scroll through as you click interactables. It seems like new art had to be created to make this work, all of which is very tasteful and entirely in line with how you’d expect these areas to look up close. Some cute interactions with the world have been added; just in the game’s opening hour, you’ll be asked to manually swipe to wipe the protagonist’s mirror and tap to knock on a neighbour’s door. Nothing is game-changing, but it’s nice to see that this port was not made lazily. Clear effort has been put into everything from the UI to the swiping options that dictate how you advance dialogue. 

A question lingers, though, one that’s more difficult to quantify - realistically, who is going to play this? The game boasts a lean price tag of $10 USD, with the first four chapters being free to try. That’s more than reasonable considering how much you’re getting. But for a game that came out six years ago, I find it hard to believe that anyone has been avoiding Disco Elysium, waiting patiently for a new version that has less content and is best experienced while taking your morning coffee break. I enjoyed my time with the port as an excuse to replay a game I loved, but if this is your first time, I can only recommend that you play it on literally any other platform first. If you don’t have a console or PC and are predominantly a mobile gamer, I can’t think of a game that lends itself to that demographic any less. 

ZA/UM’s future is up in the air, and I find it hard to imagine that Disco Elysium for mobile will move the needle in any particular direction. This is just one blip in an otherwise fascinating legal debacle that’s still raging to this day. If you’re looking for a breezier way to replay a once-in-a-generation game, I can confidently say that this version is not the wrong way to do so.