A few years ago I wrote about Eidolon POP and ROCK, the duology of RPGs based on the tabletop game, Eidolon: Become Your Best Self. Since I originally wrote about it, Eidolon’s worked on a new exciting format change that’s also led to some other games like Eidolon QUEEN, a Tactics Ogre-like by Arcadia Girl and Arcane Crystal’s Trauma Center throwback, Eidolon OYSTER.

But, the most exciting of these new games is the ongoing episodic series, Eidolon DISCO and SKA, by Jordan Rogers, who… ugh. He’s another Jonathan Blow type of guy: you’re making something really cool, but goddamn, you need to shut up. Whatever, let’s get on with it. But just warning you: this will have spoilers up to the set midpoint of the series, mainly because I feel that the stuff around that point’s just so intrinsically tied to the identity of these games, at this point, so maybe take a quick look for yourself first.

It’s almost the end of the 70s, and disco is in vogue. A group of mystery-hunting teens return home as they come of age to be dragged into a shadowy tournament that’s been happening in their humble Kentucky town for decades. KC Cardenas, Haley Hoist, Maurice Bailey and Bob McGovern are granted Eidolons and become new players in a long-run game to see who becomes a god. Maybe one of them can become a god? Maybe they’ll have a good senior year, in spite of being brought into a world of dangerous super powered individuals doing whatever they can to get power? Maybe they’ll find love? Well, Bob’s aromantic, but you get it.

But maybe not. The cast of this side of the episodic series is doomed to die at the end of the year. At least, that’s what’s claimed.

Fast forward a few decades. A new millennium is oncoming after a decade of ska, in the same place, in a better (?) time. Charlie O’Neil, Melissa Chambers, Regina Rosenthal and Naomi Shirogorov make up the latest generation of the high school’s mystery club, with the goal of solving a decades long mystery: what happened to the DISCO cast? In investigating, they stumble on the ruins of the toy shop that granted Eidolons where they come into their own. It’s through getting eidolons that they realize Charlie’s pet beetle from school is a sentient Eidolon-user named Solaris Apogee LVII 4th House (but they just go with Charlie’s pet name Solo), Regina already had her own because of a traumatic past she dares not to think about, and Naomi’s Eidolon All My Friends Are Metalheads is like, his own guy named Jake. With these powers, they explore the events of the past, the Eidolon dangers of the present, and their own interpersonal problems.

DISCO and SKA steps away from the turn-based RPG stylings of the previous games to be something more in line with RPGs like Disco Elysium. A big difference is that instead of controlling one character, you frequently switch between multiple, granting you different dialogue options and different powers to use. For example, having Maurice as the perspective character grants you some more impulsive options, and the environment around him shifts in accordance to his Eidolon Boogie Wonderland when it’s active; going along with his confrontational nature, he has the sealed room ability to trap possible enemies in a conversation, the bread and butter of games like this. Over on the SKA side, Charlie has Three Small Words, a powerful Eidolon that makes people believe in or obey anything she says as long as it’s phrased in three words; you’d think that she’d be super busted with it, but she has really reasonable ethical and moral hang ups about using it.

Using Eidolon powers and most actions relies on a gameplay element that follows in line with the second edition of Eidolon: Become Your Best Self: tarot cards. All the player characters share a deck of tarot cards to play in situations that they draw and choose from when they need to do something. The cards are divided into positive, neutral and negative outcomes, though the neutral cards offer more variety depending on the situation. The Lovers for instance forces you to choose between two binary choices, while the Emperor breaks something – and what that something is really depends on the context in which it’s played. Furthermore, each character has a “resonant” and a “dissonant” neutral card. Playing the resonant is treated as a positive that also grants a temporary buff going forward, but if a character’s dissonant shows up, it’s a negative card they’re forced to play, no matter what.

I like this gameplay style for multiple reasons. Firstly, it encourages you to think about the long term. It’d be easy to just play any positive cards you get… but what if you need those positive cards down the line for a more dangerous situation? Maybe you can intentionally choose a neutral card as one character because it’s the dissonant for another to avoid worse consequences in the future, or maybe take a bad card so you don’t waste someone’s resonant. The second thing I like about it is that the experience system feels more natural? POP and ROCK had characters earn experience whenever they experienced failure, which felt unintuitive and luck based. However, with a limited deck of cards, facing those failures is inevitable and at times, you may want those characters to face those failures to prevent worse ones.

In this way, the Phantom Clock ticking down is also more of an inevitability. With each failure, something called the Phantom Clock ticks up and when it reaches midnight, the Eidolon of the last person that messed up goes berserk, forcing the character to resolve the negative feelings their Eidolon was carrying, a forced speedrunning of character development for them. It was already around for POP and ROCK (see: Sloane facing Start a Riot), but it’s a more pronounced mechanic here. KC will in time realize that she’s a trans woman – whether it’s through normal introspection or by being browbeat by her very own berserk Sunshine Band depends on how that clock’s treating you. Eidolon DISCO and SKA teaches that failure is inevitable, but it can be beautiful; it also teaches that playing with dice is for squares.

Outside of the card dealing gameplay, there’s a lot to dig into. For one thing, there’s actually a ridiculous amount of game overs. Maurice will have a chance of dying to a chess game, Regina could skip town early on so she doesn’t have to deal with Eidolon shit again, the DISCO cast could disappear for the completely unrelated reason of sacking the city of Cincinnati, a recurring SKA NPC could accidentally freeze someone to death, Solo can use one of their assassination plots on an ally for no reason, etc. It very much takes after old adventure games in this sense, because while failure can be beautiful, it can also be very funny.

Like previous games, Eidolon DISCO and SKA have a strong focus on character writing. KC’s arc will really resonate with transgender players and people questioning themselves, as she starts out deeply closeted but soon comes to realize who she is, in one way or another. Naomi too? Their deal with Jake might be some gender stuff and/or dissociative identity disorder, but either way, they bring in something you don’t see a lot of. Even the more mundane character struggles give way to more serious issues, like Maurice’s desire to be a good detective at the start going from him wanting to impress Sherlock Holmes (it makes sense in context, I swear) to really wanting to leave his mark on the world when faced with the idea of dying young.

Also, if you like yuri, the cast got you there. KC will always end up with Haley in some way, and the girls of SKA can get with each other, though how they pair up really depends on how things go. If you play things right, you could even end up with a Regina/Charlie/Melissa throuple. Help Charlie achieve her dreams and Melissa come out of her shell, why don’t you?

Meanwhile, the heroes have a bunch of enemy Eidolon users to deal with, just a large variety of fucked up losers. While the cast’s Eidolons represent who they are as people and their growth, most enemies dream of going beyond that and being something greater than themselves. Almost every enemy is somebody pursuing power or being manipulated by someone seeking power, and a lot of them are already authority figures in themselves – but that’s clearly not enough for them. It’s a series that’s extremely anti-authority – which feels a bit hypocritical with how the creator is, if I have to be honest.

That’s not to say there aren’t any friendly faces to hang out with. There’s Haley’s caring dads who also come to support KC’s transition that are a nice contrast to Charlie’s dad, a flawed guy trying to understand his daughter being a lesbian and also the fact that she’s involved in insane supernatural drama. Outside of family, there’s a wide variety of weirdos, like a talking street, a boy trying to teach ravens the dictionary, scary weird girls of the complimentary and derogatory varieties, and sad pathetic boys of the complimentary and derogatory varieties. The best NPC though has gotta be Flannery. I support her scientific crimes against the laws of nature and I say it’s worth chasing after the Maurice/Flannery/KC-Haley achievement, because love probably won’t make her normal – but she deserves it. Only a few deserve love, the godly re seeve the good lief and whatnot.

Also important I guess: Jordan. Yeah, the creator of the games put himself in there? Like, it’s fine if creators put themselves in their own works as cameos or fun little side things, but he’s actually a pivotal character? Maybe I’m a hypocrite because I’m a Magnus Archives fan, but Jonathan Sims treats his fictional self as a different person and isn’t up his ass about it, but Jordan honestly is. It’s corny, and it’s especially annoying with how much he jacks himself off as a genius developer in-game? You can’t do that if you haven’t finished the series yet, you look like an asshole, dude. I seriously hope that he’s planning on writing himself getting humbled by the characters, because man, he’s such a little worm. Good games, though.

On that note, the writing gets pretty metafictional toward the midpoint of the series, which leads to things like characters being aware of conversations they weren’t privy to in-universe because they also get the player’s ability to read past message logs. It’s metafictional in an existential sense where the main characters become aware that they’re in a story and the narrator is treated as a god that they fucking hate, with the DISCO cast in particular stressing about being doomed by the narrative. Ever read Homestuck? It’s extremely Homestuck. Personally I like to think of it as something more like Satoshi Kon’s Opus, partly so I can pretend I was never a Homestuck.

The voice actors for the characters do a really great job at bringing them to life. Luke Varner, the voice actor for many of the NPCs for the series, brings an interesting range, and while he honestly needs to work more on teenage girl voices, I think the quality of characters like Dog and Main Street really balance it out. The voice actresses for KC and Haley also recently started dating in real life, and I think they wound up bringing a lot of authenticity to how they portray their characters’ relationship.

The music is also pretty good! Once again the music’s made by Max Knightly, who also made the Sam and Max-esque Eidolon MONTREAL. It took a bit to grow on me because her music’s styled after, well, disco and ska, two genres I didn’t really listen to before these games started development. They’re good genres, though! You gotta at least listen to Earth, Wind & Fire and Streetlight Manifesto, they’re a good cool.

Overall, the ongoing Eidolon DISCO-SKA duology is a great series that I really recommend digging into. Like before, if you’re a fan of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and Persona, you’d definitely like this, especially if you want more explicitly queer stuff. Hell, if you’re coming down from the high of Baldur’s Gate 3 and want to experience more tabletop game goodness, you should check this out. It’s a good demonstration that tabletop games and adaptations of tabletop works can dream beyond the rules of Dungeons & Dragons, and I hope to see more works like it.

…Also like before, this is unfortunately not a real game, but a podcast based on a real tabletop game. All art used in this post was commissioned from stuff_ivy, and in these times, people really gotta commission artists instead of relying on and encouraging the use of AI slop. The second edition of Eidolon: Become Your Best Self is still being developed, but you can check out the drafts that’s played for the podcast through their Patreon.