Pyre Lookout is a Disco Elysium-esque tale of bureaucratic incompetence, red tape, and frogs

You’re suspended high in a Firewatch-esque lookout post in the middle of a forest, watching the trees sway back and forth from the invisible confines of your desk. You can hear the ambient sound of insects; that melodic humming, or to some, that eerie droning. There are four of you cooped up in this makeshift office: the HR-wired Scott, disinterested youth Jayda, and Phylis, who’s survived more than one round of layoffs, countless workplace dramas, and, now, your incessant questioning. There’s a sense of stagnation in the air: a feeling that, no matter what you do, you’ll never get out of here. That’s exactly what Pyre Lookout, the new, Disco Elysium-inspired flash game from Outstar and titos2k, hopes to achieve.

You are Gerard Path, the Senior Signaling Specialist at the Pyre Lookout Unit (formerly division, but times are tough). As you take a moment to gaze out over the forest below, you smell something smoky; something burning. Panic ensues: you tell your manager, Scott, about the presumed fire. He responds by asking an AI to tell him how best to frame this dilemma to the group in a way that’s “solution-focused” and “avoids blame language.” “I think we need to handle this head-on,” he says. “Transparent messaging, team-first narrative…” he trails off into a garble of HR words (that don’t include the word ‘fire’) as you pass him by: at least you told him, you guess.

After much back and forth, with forms being exchanged, new prompts being written, and various passive-aggressive insults being slung largely in your direction, you radio HQ and ask for some help with the situation. You’re informed that it is, in fact, your tower that’s on fire, but in order to ensure that the helicopters can reach you safely, you need to fill out Form C and call them back. You request that they email it to Scott, yet Scott receives no email: the router is broken, but Scott is a people-first guy, not a technician – why would he be able to fix it? Instead, you appeal to Jayda’s zoomerness, but in order for her to do so, she has to fill out yet another form – a form that Phylis informs you is out of date, rendering it null and void.

While you could quickly argue that all of this feels like a gigantic waste of time – in the world of Pyre Lookout, it is – it doesn’t feel that way as you play. Action plays out similarly to ZA/UM’s seminal RPG, with dice rolls dictating whether you pass or fail interactions, adding a splash of luck to a particularly unlucky situation. But I found myself genuinely laughing at the dialog, rolling my eyes, and murmuring a soft ‘been there’ under my breath. It’s bureaucracy at its finest – a series of pointless yet immovable rules that, in this instance, could have led to people dying.

Pyre Lookout sees you play by that metaphorical red tape; as you read through each character’s conversations, you feel yourself waning; the strength sapping out of you as yet another pointless rule prevents you from completing a simple task. It makes the Disco Elysium visual novel/RPG hybrid format the perfect fit: it’s so many words, saying so very little, causing so many problems.

Apologies, I should have framed that more positively: mindless AI, write me a prompt.

Now it’s obviously worth saying that Pyre Lookout isn’t a Disco Elysium replacement; it’s a flash game built by two developers in just three days for Ludum Dare’s game jam. Yet, it scratches all of those ZA/UM-esque itches, and feels like the perfect chaser to my Esoteric Ebb-induced hangover. It’s fun and it’s silly, but it’s also witty and intriguing, which isn’t an easy feat to achieve. You can try out Pyre Lookout here, and I suggest you bond with the frog. You’ll see what I mean.

You may also recognize one of the two developers. Martyna ‘Outstar’ Zych is currently the Creative Producer at White Wolf, the minds behind Vampire: The Masquerade (is that a ‘Phyre’ reference I see?), Hunter: The Reckoning, and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. They created the Bloodlines 1-inspired flash game, Santa Monica By Night, which you can read about here – it’s absolutely worth playing.