Zero Parades: Everything We Know

ZA/UM surprised the RPG world with the reveal of Zero Parades at Gamescom 2025. You step into Hershel Wilk, known as CASCADE, a broken spy with a dark past. The game mixes spy drama, surreal worlds, and heavy choices. The trailer showed a neon-noir city packed with strange people and cryptic lines. Additionally, your friends are you, each a separate limb of the whole. The art style calls back to Disco Elysium, with watercolor tones and surreal shapes. Below, we discuss everything we know about this title so far.

What Is Zero Parades?

You play as Hershel Wilk, an operative pulled back after five years of erasing herself. She’s been referred to as brilliant, burnt-out, and possibly cursed. Be warned that perfection will crush you. The city, called the End of History, is more than a backdrop. Ideologies, trauma, and mystery shape its walls and its people. You face techno-fascists, greedy bankers, psychic doubles, and even a man with a box for a heart. 

Every step forces you to dig for truth in a place that wants to bury it. Dice rolls shape your fate, but it's not about luck. Each roll gambles with sanity and shifts the city's power struggles under your feet. The world moves whether you win or lose in Zero Parades. Your choices also ripple through the city, altering how allies and enemies respond to you. So, survival depends on skill as well as how well you read the shifting tides of power.

Story

The story plays out inside chaos, paranoia, and broken identities. You'll meet wild characters like a paranoid TV host or a banker who thinks he's a prophet. No one wastes words. Every chat drips with tension. Failure doesn't kill the story. It flips it sideways. Compromise becomes discovery. Each flashback, each paranoid whisper, adds to Hershel's unraveling. Her fight is not to save the world. It's to keep standing as the world tries to tear her apart.

Choices stack and memory becomes a battlefield. Past decisions return as ghosts that twist the present. Even quiet moments bring risk. A single wrong word in downtime can destroy an ally as fast as a bullet. As a result, trust becomes fragile, and every bond feels temporary. So, each turn of the story deepens the sense of survival. It also depends on perception as much as action.

Gameplay

Gameplay keeps the story close. It plays like a CRPG game, using dice rolls to decide tense talks and risky moves. You control Hershel from an isometric view, making every choice heavy and unclear. Objects swirl and visions break around you, mirroring Hershel's mind. Each encounter forces quick thought and a cold reaction. Skills carry weight. You'll feel every roll in your gut, whether it wins or fails. 

Failing still builds the path, new allies, strange clues, or worse trouble. Fighting isn't about big gunplay. It’s about risk spilling into the story itself. Skills unlock doors while slamming others shut. Even the interface bends and flickers, as if Hershel's head leaks into the game. Small acts, like lighting a cigarette, ripple into new story turns. In addition, small failures can sometimes feel more rewarding than big wins. The game makes every moment carry tension, even when nothing explosive happens.

Development

Development comes from ZA/UM, the studio behind Disco Elysium. However, much of the original leadership and talent have since departed the studio, making Zero Parades a solo effort by a new team within ZA/UM. That means expectations rest on fresh vision, not nostalgia. Despite that, the game retains its predecessor's surreal brushwork, oddball characters, and cerebral script style. A tense studio backdrop feeds into the narrative's fractured tone. You can feel that tension leaking into storytelling and aesthetics. It's known as a spiritual successor, under familiar skin, yet clearly different. 

The shift in creative leadership is important because you're not just seeing recycled Disco Elysium beats. Instead, the new team at ZA/UM has a chance to prove they can innovate without leaning too heavily on the past. Neon light and warped streets flood the frame, sharp and moody. ZA/UM's look feels familiar but tighter, more urgent, darker, and more dangerous. The reveal felt like a coded invite into a twisted world of spycraft, not just another fantasy RPG.

Trailer

The reveal trailer came with sharp cuts and a heavy mood. Hershel walks neon streets, rain pouring, shadows watching. Dialogue blares over quick shots, strange and cryptic. The trailer shows the city as a living fever dream. The score uses low drones and sharp spikes to layer dread over every scene. Dice flashes hint at mechanics without clear answers. Faces smear into masks. The protagonists melt into propaganda mid-sentence. Every frame feels loaded, like the camera itself is hallucinating. 

Fans spotted the painterly art they know, sharper and more jagged this time. The devs called the trailer a manifesto, not a preview. Even phrases like “gambling with truth and losing with style” feel like a taunt. The cut ends on Hershel staring at mirrors, each one showing a new ideology. They all shatter at once. As a result, the trailer leaves more questions than answers.

Release Date and Platforms

Zero Parades doesn't have a locked release date, but ZA/UM marked it for 2025. The Steam page is live now, ready for wishlists and news. PC comes first, though console ports are on the table. The team hinted at next-gen systems like the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. That points to sharper graphics and smoother play. The devs refuse to overpromise, so details are slim for now. 

Still, ZA/UM's history shows PC will lead, with consoles later. Early builds already run well on average PCs, which is good news for most players. The team also teased controller support so that dialogue-heavy play won't feel clunky on console. A staggered rollout could echo Disco Elysium, PC first, polished ports later. Steam remains the best bet if you want day-one access. Expect daily diaries, new trailers, and more drops as launch nears. The developers want you hooked in early, tracking every shift before release.