ZA/UM has fully revealed / announced ZERO PARADES, their espionage RPG originally revealed earlier this year as Project [C4].
ZERO PARADES is in development for Windows PC (via Steam), though a release date wasn’t announced.
Here’s a rundown on the game, plus its reveal trailer:
From ZA/UM comes ZERO PARADES – a story-rich espionage RPG. You’re a brilliant but tormented operant on a desperate assignment. Pick up the pieces of your broken network, untangle a bloody web of intrigue at the End of History, and prove yourself on the big stage or blow it all up – again.
A spy like no other
Brilliant, burnt-out, possibly cursed – you play as operant Hershel Wilk, alias CASCADE. Five years ago you led your team into the abyss and have been haunted by your failures ever since. Now you’ve been recalled for a mysterious assignment that may give you a chance to prove yourself again.
Welcome to the End of History
Find yourself thrown into a three-way struggle for cultural and ideological power, played out across an unforgettable new city. In ZERO PARADES, the world itself is a character with its own secrets, traumas, and miracles for you to discover.
Trust is a volatile plaything
To get anywhere in this world, you’ll need friends. Unfortunately, you don’t have any. Instead, you’ll go up against international bankers, foreign techno-fascists, psychic doppelgängers, a paranoid TV presenter, a man with a box for a heart, and dozens more. Everyone you meet has their own agendas, beliefs, and secrets for you to uncover and turn to your own ends.
Make it up as you go along
In this line of work you’re going to fail *way* more often than you succeed. That much is expected of you. What matters is how you pick yourself back up. As an operant, your dice are in the hand of fate. If they don’t go your way (and they won’t), you’ll have to improvise and hope the consequences are ones you can live with.
Key Features:
- Become an Anti-Icon: Play as Hershel – brilliant, relentless, magnetic… and cursed. A former top operant whose touch turns everything to ash. She is as dangerous to her enemies as she is to her friends.
- Espionage Reinvented: Descend into a world of bootleg mind-erasure, failed space programmes, and state-sponsored pop stars. This is espionage stripped of glamour – no parades, no happy endings – at least probably not for you.
- Failing Forward: In the life of an operant, failure is inevitable. Here, it’s another way forward – every misstep opens doors that success would run swiftly by.
- A Story-Rich Espionage RPG: From the studio which brought you Disco Elysium. Blending the psychological depth of a spy novel with surrealist undertones and richly drawn characters.
- A Question of Identity: Who are you when no one is watching? Or, at least, when you *think* no one is? In ZERO PARADES, the answer will define much more than just the assignment. Cope with the terror of reality by giving up parts of yourself and try not to lose your mind in the process.
