With ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies, ZA/UM’s isn’t just making a follow up to Disco Elysium: Instead, the developers are challenging the way CRPG players have been conditioned to play. Rather than rewarding perfectionism and quick-save compulsions, the game’s newly revealed Dramatic Encounters system injects high-stakes action into a traditionally text-driven format, forcing players to make snap decisions in the heat of the moment. No save-scumming. No do-overs. Just rolling with the punches.
But this isn’t difficulty for difficulty’s sake. Producer Jess Crawford and VO director/writer Jim Ashilevi described Zero Parades as an “anti-power fantasy,” where failure isn’t a punishment. It’s propulsion. Inspired by the philosophy of “failing forward,” the developers want players to embrace botched rolls and bad calls not as setbacks, but as narrative catalysts.
Zero Parades For Dead Spies (Image Credit: ZA/UM)
After a presentation earlier this month, much of the gameplay shown was kept under embargo, and most notably the Dramatic Encounters system. Now free to be talked about, and demonstrated via early alpha gameplay, the system showed protagonist Herschel sprinting through a rapid-fire gauntlet of skill checks and split-second choices that played out like a full action sequence. In one moment, she vaulted across rooftops. According to the developers, the same system can inspire tailing missions, foot chases and other high-intensity moments typically absent from traditional text-heavy CRPGs.
The developers explained that the system was a way of creating the high-tension and urgent drama in an otherwise text-based game.
“A lot of the gameplay is just, you know, hundreds of pages of dialogue,” Crawford said. “But then if we’re working on an espionage story, surely we’re going to need some action scenes as well. But we’re not a studio that would, you know, even know how to make an action game as such or a platformer or anything that is more high octane. So the Dramatic Encounters are our answer to that question.”
Zero Parades For Dead Spies (Image Credit: ZA/UM)
Zero Parades, which the gaming studio frames as an “anti-power fantasy,” isn’t interested in letting players brute-force perfection. Instead, the developers want to encourage what they call “failing forward” — resisting the urge to reload saves after a bad roll or regretful decision. As longtime Disco Elysium and Baldur’s Gate players ourselves, we’ll admit we’ve rarely resisted that temptation. But Zero Parades is determined to make the consequences part of the thrill.
“Keep in mind that this is a game about failure and failing forward,” Ashilevi explained “So in Dramatic Encounters, you’re sort of, as a player, forced to be quick on your feet and to just make quick decisions without worrying about the results. You need to just roll with it, whatever happens. And if the end result is not what you expected, our dream would be to just encourage you to embrace the failure instead of, you know, save-scumming.”
Importantly, failure doesn’t mean game over. Being a CRPG, setbacks branch into alternate storylines, character beats or unexpected outcomes. Completionists may even want to intentionally engineer failures just to see what unfolds. But it’s a tricky design space. Encouraging players to embrace failure often requires a philosophical shift more than a mechanical one. Games like Mount & Blade or Dwarf Fortress (with its unofficial motto: “losing is fun”) don’t glorify failure, but they make it meaningful. ZA/UM and Zero Parades: For Dead Spies
“Our Dramatic Encounters require players to make decisions and stick by those decisions,” the team said. “And we really like that failing forward design mechanic that we’re pushing for.”
Zero Parades doesn’t just allow failure — it celebrates it as both theme and mechanic. If there’s a lesson buried in all that chaos, it’s that stumbling isn’t the end. It’s where the story begins.
Featured image credit: ZA/UM
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