Mapping Revachol: Reconstructing the World of Disco Elysium with GIS
As a big fan of Disco Elysium and GIS, particularly QGIS, I tried to combine the two by creating various GIS layers of the fictional city of Revachol, where the game takes place. These layers cover topography, district boundaries, points of interest (POIs), infrastructure, and roads. The GIS layers are available in GeoPackage and raster formats in a GitHub repository.
In this article, I will explain how I reconstructed Revachol geographically, describe the GIS layers I created, and use them to produce a series of thematic maps of the city.
What is Disco Elysium?
Disco Elysium is a video game released on PC in 2019 and on consoles in 2021. It was developed and published by the Estonian studio ZA/UM. The game draws heavily on tabletop role-playing game mechanics. Players take on the role of Harry Du Bois, an alcoholic detective who wakes up with complete amnesia, unable to remember who he is. Alongside his partner, Kim Kitsuragi, he must investigate a crime in Martinaise, a poor district of the city of Revachol. Throughout the game, players are faced with choices and actions that can have an impact on how the story unfolds, with dice rolls determining the outcome of certain actions, just like in any good RPG.
The game is based on a tabletop role-playing game that Robert Kurvitz, the creative mind behind Disco Elysium, had created before founding ZA/UM in 2016 to adapt it into a video game. He also wrote the Estonian novel Sacred and Terrible Air, published in 2013, which laid the foundations for the game’s world of Elysium.
Disco Elysium is one of the best games I have ever played. It is therefore no surprise that it won four awards at The Game Awards 2019. Its writing and world-building are particularly noteworthy, with political themes (something quite rare in video games) explored through the lens of major political ideologies: communism, fascism, capitalist realism, and liberalism. The game’s world is deeply influenced by the post-Soviet era, disillusionment with capitalism, and the lingering disappointment of failed revolutions.
This rich lore inspired me to map the city of Revachol in GIS, where the events of the game take place. The city of Revachol is located on the island of Le Caillou, which itself is part of the larger world of Elysium.
Mapping Revachol: A Brief History
A map of Revachol West, particularly the Jamrock district, was published in 2017 on the ZA/UM blog as part of an article featuring an interview with Robert Kurvitz and Aleksander Rostov. At the time, Disco Elysium was still called No Truce with the Furies and was still in development. The original article is no longer available on the ZA/UM website, but the map has been widely preserved and shared by the fan community. The map that I digitized and projected served as the basis for constructing the different layers that I will detail in this article, at least for its western section.
Several attempts have been made to create an image-based map of Revachol. Mapmax analyzed the world of Disco Elysium and its geographical landmarks in order to construct his map. He presented his methodology in three Medium articles (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). ssshiversss published their map on Reddit and Tumblr in 2025, drawing inspiration from Mapmax’s work by also depicting the streets, while aiming to be even more faithful to the lore. caricatureblue then re-re-re-mapped Revachol, drawing inspiration from both of these works, while also mapping the entirety of Insulinde and adopting the visual conventions used in ZA/UM’s 2017 map. These three authors inspired the form I envisioned for the map of Revachol, as well as the creation of the city’s geographic layers in GIS format.
⚠️ The different GIS layers of Revachol are my own interpretation of the lore, inspired by the work of those who came before me. The lore sometimes contradicts itself when it comes to the geographical designations of places, and fan wikis do not necessarily provide details on every location and geographical area of the city. Nevertheless, they provided me with a solid foundation for building Revachol’s thematic layers.
Projection and typeface for the maps
You are all familiar with projections such as Mercator or those used by GPS (WGS 84). For the different layers of Revachol, I used a Gauss–Krüger projection as a nod to Disco Elysium, since the Gauss–Krüger projection was widely used in the USSR and other Eastern Bloc countries. More precisely, I used the DHDN / 3-degree Gauss-Krüger Zone 3 projection (EPSG:31467).
For the typography, I used Russo One by Jovanny Lemonad. It is a modern typeface inspired by Cyrillic and Russian culture, making it well suited for labeling geographical features on the map of Revachol. The OCR A Extended typeface was also used for specific labels and annotations, adding a more technical and retro-computing feel to the maps.
Topography of Revachol
Revachol lies in the delta of the River Esperance and is made up of several islands. The city also faces the Insulindian Ocean through Bay of Revachol. Several islands are explicitly mentioned in the lore, including Martinaise Island, home to its sea fort, as well as Resurrection and E48. The revachol_land_use.gpkg GeoPackage and its two associated layers represent the city, the areas outside the city, the river delta, and the ocean, as well as the parks and swamps scattered throughout the urban area. Some of these parks are explicitly mentioned in the lore, such as the notorious Pox park.
To construct the revachol_DEM.tif raster representing the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of Revachol, I based my work on the topography depicted through contour lines on ZA/UM’s 2017 map. Three prominent elevated areas are also mentioned in the game:
- Mount Saint-Martin, which overlooks the Coal City district, located west of Martinaise along the coast.
- The hills where the Le Jardin district is located, built on a hillside east of the River Esperance.
- Several buildings in Grand Couron are also located on hillsides.
This information allowed me to construct contour lines, or to infer their approximate location where no information was available. The resulting contour layer was then used to create the Revachol DEM raster using QGIS’s “Rasterize (Vector to Raster)” tool. I also used the “Batch Hillshader” QGIS plugin to automatically generate hillshade layers from the DEM raster.
Transport and infrastructure
As with the topography, I used ZA/UM’s 2017 map as a reference to construct several transportation routes:
- Highway
- Road
- Tunnel
- Canal
- Canal tunnel
I also added levees and dams, as hydroelectric power generation on the River Esperance is mentioned in the game’s lore as a source of energy, alongside oil, which has replaced coal.
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The infrastructure is compiled in the revachol_transport-infrastructure.gkpg GeoPackage, with their respective types specified. Some transportation routes have names in the game’s lore, which are specified in the layer’s “name” column, such as Boogie Street, which runs through the Jamrock and Faubourg districts and is mentioned several times in the game, the 8/81 motorway, and the streets of Martinaise (Rue de Saint-Ghislaine and Rue de Saint-Brune).
Districts of Revachol
Nine districts, plus the island of Resurrection, are explicitly identified in the game and its expanded universe.
In Revachol West (the poorer districts of Revachol):
- Jamrock, where the events of the game take place
- Coal City, west of Jamrock, along the coast and dominated by Mount Saint-Martin
- Faubourg, south of Jamrock. It is the largest district in Revachol and also the poorest
- Wheat Town, also south of Jamrock
In central Revachol:
- La Delta, a central district of Revachol and its economic center
- The Greater Revachol Industrial Harbour (G.R.I.H), the city’s main harbour
In Revachol East (the wealthier districts of Revachol):
- Saint-Batiste, home to two multinational corporations
- Le Jardin, located on a hillside
- Stella Maris, along the ocean
These districts can also be subdivided into several sub-districts. The sub-districts of Jamrock are mentioned in the game and on ZA/UM’s map of Jamrock, including Martinaise, Central Jamrock, Villalobos, Grand Couron, etc. For the other districts, some sub-district names are sometimes derived from the game’s lore or the fanbase, while others are mentioned in the game itself, such as the Financial District and La Rocca in Delta, or L’Ossuaire Municipal in Coal City, for example. For the Greater Revachol Industrial Harbour (G.R.I.H), several terminals are mentioned in the game. Terminal B, which can be partially explored during the game, notably includes the G.R.I.H. Terminal B Secretariat building. Terminal E is mentioned in connection with a small strike, while Terminal H is located near the Precinct 57 police station. Terminal YC is mentioned as being located in Coal City. For my map, I arranged the terminals from west to east using the letters “A” to “I”, with Terminal YC located in Coal City. I interpreted “YC” as an anagram of Yard Coal, a reference to its location in Coal City.
Points of Interest (POIs)
The POIs were either based on locations and elements explicitly mentioned in the game or created based on the game’s lore. To identify and document them, I relied primarily on two particularly comprehensive wikis dedicated to Disco Elysium: the Disco Elysium Wiki on Fandom and the Disco Elysium Wiki on wiki.gg.
The POIs are grouped into several categories, including entertainment venues such as the Grand Couron Arena and the Paliseum, RCM precincts such as Precinct 41 and Precinct 57, companies, including the Indotribes, radio stations (Channel 8, Speedfreaks FM…) and official buildings, including The Bank of the World and INSURCOM’s headquarters and hotels, most notably the Whirling-in-Rags, among many others. The full list of POI categories and their associated attributes is available in the project’s GitHub repository. All POIs are included in the revachol_poi.gkpg GeoPackage. The “official” column indicates whether a POI is officially mentioned in the game or its expanded universe, or whether it was created based on my own interpretation of the game’s lore. Other POIs are nods to real-world locations or references to elements of the game. For example, Haut-Koenigstein Castle (The Old Royal Castle) is a reference to the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg. The name Koenigstein is itself a reference to the French anarchist activist known as Revachol. Other locations are inspired directly by elements from the game, such as the Lafayette Potent Brewery, which brews Potent Pilsner, a beer that can be purchased in the game. Among the more unusual locations derived from the game’s lore is The People’s Pile, a Type U particle decay generator mentioned in the game.
Map Layout
For the map layouts, I used a small inset to echo the visual design of Disco Elysium. I included the flag and the name of the political entity that administers the city: the Zone of Control. At the time in which the game takes place, Revachol is administered as a Zone of Control established by the Coalition following a revolutionary period known as the Commune. The flag of the Zone of Control is described in the lore as being “signal blue”. I therefore incorporated the flag of the Revachol Zone of Control under the Coalition of Nations, created by Virgulillo on Reddit, as I particularly liked its design and felt that it matched the description.
I also added a fictional affiliation to my name with the Revachol Institute of Geography, originally founded as the Royal Institute of Geography and later renamed the Citizen Institute of Revachol under the Commune, to further reinforce the Elysian atmosphere.
Several map layouts are included in the QGIS project. You can use these layouts to create your own map, or design your own from scratch.
GitHub Repository
The Revachol GIS data are freely available in the GitHub repository.
You are welcome to use and share the GIS project, its layers, and its maps for your role-playing games, or simply to explore the lore of Disco Elysium. If you use or adapt this work, I simply ask that you credit the original project.
The city is yours to map. Just don’t lose your way in Jamrock.
