ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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From the creators of Disco Elysium comes ZERO PARADES – an espionage RPG. You're a brilliant but tormented operant on one final desperate assignment. Gather your broken network, untangle a web of lies, and prove yourself on the world stage - or blow it all up again.
ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is a indie, rpg and story rich game
developed and published by ZA/UM.
Released on May 21st 2026 is available only on Windows
in 5 languages: English, German, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Spanish - Latin America.
It has received 2,237 reviews of which 1,868 were positive and 369 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.0 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 36.89€ on Steam with a 10% discount.
The Steam community has classified ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies into these genres:
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System requirements
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Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: Intel Core i5 6500
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5
- DirectX: Version 11
Steam Price & Best Deals
User reviews & Ratings
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It isn't Disco Elysium, though it's more than fair to compare the two. Many people who worked on Disco worked on this game, and the effort to improve gameplay systems is apparent; this is a better *game* than Disco Elysium, when it comes to the actual playing, because of the improvements to the dice rolls, the exertion system, the dynamic action sequences, the game's thought cabinet. and so on. Is it as well written as Disco Elysium? I think that's the wrong question. Disco Elysium is a philosophical and political exploration of what it means to be human, disguised as a police procedural. Zero Parades is a "spy" narrative that's really a story about... well, that's the thing. I can't really say the story is about one thing, because it isn't. There's moments of genuine philosophical interest (the motif of "bootlegging," creating derivative works, and the uniqueness of expression vs. mass culture), some really fascinating political worldbuilding (EMTERR is a great concept), some great cosmic horror-adjacent sequences, and a lot of very personal narratives and sidequests about helping out people you failed before (or who have failed you). All of this is loosely wrapped into a "spy" narrative that is real loose on the "spy" part in many places. Disco Elysium was an incoherent, sprawling, rambling exploration of so many different ideas which, miraculously, manages to become more than the sum of its myriad parts. The fact that the ending of that game goes from old-west standoff to detective-thriller to brutal meditation on loss to political-thesis to surreal supernatural zoology to personal reckoning is nothing short of incredible. It shouldn't work, but it does. Zero Parades is a sprawling, loosely-connected series of interesting adventures, cultural satire, comedic side-quests, uncanny horror, surprising twists and reveals, and heart-wrenching vignettes of loss, broken relationships, and "never-to-be" relationships. I laughed out loud a ton while playing this game; my heart was racing at many points; I was sad for and deeply empathetic toward many of the characters, The question really shouldn't be "Is this as well written as Disco Elysium?" because Disco Elysium is one-of-one; the question is "Is Zero Parades a well written and engaging narrative," and I think that, yes, it is. It is of a different tone and timbre to Disco, and it will resonate less with many fans of Disco and more with people who, perhaps, didn't connect to Disco as much. But as someone who has put a hundred hours into Disco Elysium, who loves it dearly, and who views it as one of the best narratives I have ever engaged with in any medium, I can say that Zero Parades felt worth my time. As for the circumstances surrounding the production of the game, others are better situated to speak to that. All I will say is that it is both apparent that Kurvitz and co. were screwed over by ZA/UM and that there are many people at ZA/UM who worked on Disco Elysium, who could have left, but stayed and created this game. Those people ultimately know the situation far more intimately than I, and if they endorse Zero Parades, then that's good enough for me. If I were coming to this game in a vacuum, I would have loved it immediately. As it stands, even with all the expectations and pressures, I found a lot of joy and worth in playing it, and I plan to play it again. Don't expect this to be Disco Elysium; expect it to be something clearly inspired by Disco Elysium, but played in an entirely different key.
TL;DR Yeah, Zero Parades delivers for people willing to give it a fair chance. I am part of the crowd that thinks ZA/UM should not parade (he he) Disco Elysium's corpse around as a selling point for this game, but I also think people are doing the game a disservice by dismissing it because of that. The game has some issues. It throws a ton of exposition at you, quest and journal tracking can be buggy, achievement tracking is unreliable, and the OST never quite reached the same heights as the rest of the game's art departments for me. That being said, the worldbuilding is fantastic, the characters are incredibly memorable, and as someone from South America, seeing a game so heavily inspired by Latin America and its history was honestly surreal. There is a lot of genuine passion and heart put into this game, and despite its flaws, I think it's absolutely worth your time if you're into CRPGs and dialogue-heavy RPGs. With 53 hours on the clock, I can confidently recommend Zero Parades if: • You're a fan of Disco Elysium. • You're really into CRPGs. Now, I know ZA/UM are on Santa's naughty list for essentially axing THE actual team behind Disco Elysium, and them promoting this game as "from the creators of Disco Elysium" is very much a Ship of Theseus kinda thing. Personally, I think marketing it as such is a disservice both to Disco Elysium fans and to the game's own merits. That being said, I'm not gonna be an imbecile and pretend the game is garbage because of it. You can tell there is actual passion and heart in every aspect of this game. The characters, the worldbuilding, the art style, I loved every aspect of the experience. I could tell I was playing something special really early on. The Bad Exposition Overload This is easily my biggest gripe with the game. In favor of having a really believable world, a lot of characters tend to be overly talkative and exposition-heavy. Almost every character you meet starts talking about the geopolitical state of the world and the events that led it to be the way it is. That wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but the game throws a lot of terms, events, and esoteric concepts at you in such a small window of time that they don't linger long enough in your mind before the next conversation starts introducing even more. I don't think worldbuilding through dialogue is inherently bad, but the game expects you to grasp its concepts as it's revealing them to you. It can be overwhelming enough that it disrupts the core gameplay. Much like Esoteric Ebb, I think this game could really use an encyclopedia or codex that lets you revisit concepts and organizations you've already encountered. Quest and journal tracking There are some bugs plaguing journal tracking. Objectives you've already completed sometimes remain unfinished, while others can be marked as failed when they weren't. Since the journal is your main tool for knowing what to do next, this can lead you astray if you don't remember exactly what you've already done. Quest progression can also be weird. I had situations where quests seemed to resolve themselves or lock me out of certain outcomes without any clear reason. Whether these are bugs or intended design choices, they left me frustrated more than once. Achievement tracking At the time of writing this review, achievement tracking doesn't seem to work properly. After finishing the game, I looked through the achievements I missed and repeatedly found myself thinking: "Wait, didn't I do that already?" And yes, I did. The game simply didn't award the achievement. Given that I wasn't save scumming and was committing to my choices, it made me question how accurately the game was tracking my overall progress. The soundtrack I have to say the OST kinda falls behind, not only compared to Disco Elysium, but compared to the rest of Zero Parades' art departments. I'm not saying it's bad. The saxophones in particular do a fantastic job of selling the spy vibe. The problem is that even while writing this review and listening to the soundtrack, I struggle to associate specific tracks with specific moments from the game. Minor bugs and performance There are some minor bugs, like audio SFX and HUD elements lingering during gameplay that can only be fixed by restarting the game. The game is also surprisingly demanding. Stutters are rare, but you can definitely hear your hardware putting its back into it, and I personally don't think there's enough graphical artistry here to justify that. The Good The premise I love the premise. A lot of folks seem to think being a spy has to involve a suit, a supercar, and cool gadgets. This is not a Bond movie. Having a guerrilla-style spy network feels way more grounded and believable, and it's a great setting for the story. The worldbuilding Now I also LOVE the worldbuilding here. Being from South America and seeing a setting inspired by Latin America during the 80s and 90s was fantastic. Having characters speaking Spanish and using region-specific slang and curse words I'd never heard in a game before was such a surreal experience. I know I complained about the amount of exposition, but once you start understanding the organizations, alliances, motives, and historical events shaping the world, the payoff is huge. Given real-world events like Operation Condor and foreign interference in South America, the premise hits especially hard. Everything involving Néstor and Néstorismo just hit close to home. The characters The characters are superb all around. I enjoyed interacting with every single one of them, and there isn't a single character I found weak either in relation to the overall plot or on their own. My favorite was Dr. Gonza. Even characters with very little screen time, like Néstor, have so much personality packed into such little dialogue that I could never get tired of hearing them. For a game where your core gameplay is interacting with people, that's incredibly important, and Zero Parades absolutely nails it. Quality of life improvements There are some QoL elements that are a direct upgrade from Disco Elysium. That said, like in Disco Elysium, some skills feel much more useful than others. I also found it odd that my character had a neck slot for the entire game and in 50+ hours I only found two items that actually went there, one of them being extremely late into the game. Final Thoughts Yeah, Zero Parades delivers for people willing to give it a fair chance. As of launch, it has bugs and quest-tracking issues that need to be resolved, but like most games launching nowadays, I believe these defects will be ironed out in the future. What won't need fixing is the passion behind the game. You can feel it in the writing, the characters, the setting, and the world itself. For all my complaints, I finished the game after 53 hours wanting more, and I think that's probably the best compliment I can give it.
To be quite blunt with you, anyone saying that this game is a soulless cash grab and hasn’t even made it past the one-hour mark, is, to put it as nicely as possible, full of ♥♥♥♥. I am throwing all Disco Elysium comparisons out the window, because in my playtime of 34 hours and reaching the end, I was constantly proven right that one should not view this game as its shallower cousin of DE. Zero Parades simply did way too much right that I stopped thinking of this as a DE spiritual sequel, and instead just its own unique package of art. Zero Parades narrative has a lot of moving parts that take a few hours to set in. Some of them are hard to understand, sometimes even unclear, or why they play into the grander picture. The more I sat down and explored this beautiful slice of Portofilo however, the more I came to sympathize with Hershel and her near crew members, new and old. ZP intentionally holds back its strongest narrative beats, as the surrounding circumstances are usually important to be understood on why they are significant. It slowly but surely unravels its colorful canvas that by the end, I became so hooked that I wanted to see this through, no matter what. Even though the world was hard to understand at times, it’s cohesive and isn’t just random garbage thrown at the screen. There is a purpose to the sauce here and uncovering the layers about this world after having beaten it, I found myself being struck more in awe how immensely cool and complex this is. There is no other way to describe it, this is simply really good storytelling on almost all fronts. Or as Hauzman would put this, this game has *it* and then some. Don’t let the surrounding circumstances of Zero Parades and ZA/UM rob you of forming your own opinion. Give it a shot, sail the high seas if necessary. But at least, give it a fair chance. I found lots to love here. Perhaps you will too.
Whomever decided to fire the people in charge of Disco Elysium are horrible and should be fired themselves, but this game is really very good. It's very well written and very polished. It takes a lot from Disco Elysium, which is unfortunate given the circumstances but it was still made with love from a lot of people who weren't involved in that decision. Doesn't deserve to be review bombed. Worth playing if you're a fan of CRPGs.
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Frequently Asked Questions
ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is currently priced at 36.89€ on Steam.
Yes, ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is currently available at a 10% discount. You can purchase it for 36.89€ on Steam.
Yes, ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies received 1,868 positive votes out of a total of 2,237 achieving a rating of 8.02.
😎
ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies was developed and published by ZA/UM.
Yes, ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is playable and fully supported on Windows.
No, ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is not playable on MacOS.
No, ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is not playable on Linux.
ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is a single-player game.
Yes, there are 2 DLCs available for ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies. Explore additional content available for ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies on Steam.
No, ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Yes, ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies supports Remote Play on Phone and Remote Play on Tablet. Discover more about Steam Remote Play.
Yes, ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 25 June 2026 01:11 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 01 July 2026 14:04 |
| Steam price | 06 July 2026 13:07 |
| Steam reviews | 03 July 2026 23:59 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies
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- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
604
Developer
ZA/UM
Publisher
ZA/UM
Release
21 May 2026
Platforms
Remote Play
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