Disc Room is an action-puzzle game published by Devolver Digital, and released for PC and Nintendo Switch in October 2020. It was developed by a team of developers: Kitty Calis, Jan Willem Nijman, Terri Vellmann and Doseone.
The year is (69 years behind the time held on the internal clock of whatever device you happen to be playing the game on) and a giant disc has appeared in orbit of Jupiter. Step into the oversized space suit of a brave scientist and explore this sprawling intergalactic slaughterhouse.
Tropes:
- Deadly Disc: The main obstacle of the game, with over 50 variants of them across all the rooms.
- Death Is Cheap: Every challenge ends in your death, and you will need to die to specific disc types in order to gain new abilities and make progress.
- Developer's Foresight: One of the game's options for blood color is "confetti," which replaces all the blood and gore from dying with rainbow-colored confetti. It also replaces any mention of blood in the game's text with "confetti."
- Driving Question: It's unclear why there's a giant disc orbiting Jupiter filled with rooms containing smaller, deadly discs, but it's your duty to find out...right after dealing with your purple friend and their mysterious goals.
- Expendable Clone: Normal Mode ends with the player rescuing their purple friend, using their Clone power, and leaving one version of themself behind while the other takes the bomb purple was carrying and sacrifices themself.
- Gotta Catch Them All: There's a Disc-pedia that catalogues every single disc you've died to.
- Level in Reverse: Normal mode starts at the bottom of a map of rooms, and ends at the top. Hard mode starts at the top, as you work your way back to the bottom.
- Me's a Crowd: One of the power-ups, Clone, allows the player to make additional copies of themself. The stage continues as long as one version of you is still alive.
- Over 100% Completion: Clearing every room in both Normal and Hard modes reaches 200% completion.
- Remixed Level: In addition to doing rooms in roughly reverse order, all of the Hard mode versions add additional discs that make reaching the ten-second survival goals a challenge to reach.
- Saw Blades of Death: Avoiding deadly circular saws is the central point of the game. They come in multiple behaviors. Some move around the edges, some bounce around.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: The purpose of the majority of rooms is to survive as long as possible, sometimes accomplishing some side-goal such as defeating a "Guardian" disc. The Golden rooms, however, are puzzles in which you have to use one of your powers in a specific way to reveal a new type of disc.
- Victor Gains Loser's Powers: Inverted. You gain powers after being killed by specific discs that use said powers, such as Dash from a disc that can speed at you, or Clone from a multiplying disc.