It took me a while to get into Esoteric Ebb, a new CRPG from developer Christoffer Bodegård. The game is basically Disco Elysium but inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, and it’s a lot of fun. When you start Esoteric Ebb, you build your cleric by assigning out different ability scores — the traditional D&D ones like strength, wisdom, and charisma — and a background focus to give your character some history. There are also a handful of prebuilt characters if you don’t want to spend too much time tinkering, and I picked the one with the highest charisma stat, “Unstable Cleric,” because I like having persuasive conversations in these types of games.
Every once in a while, you’ll get into a combat scenario. While they’re still mostly weaving through text conversations, you’ll have some tense dice rolls that can affect the outcome of the fight. I died often, but since I usually saved before meaningful encounters, this wasn’t much of an issue. You can cast spells to influence situations, improve your dice rolls, or open up new opportunities to talk with characters of all kinds in the game. I even chatted with a giant snail.
In retrospect, I think my initial unfocused-feeling experience is actually the intended experience of Esoteric Ebb. Like a great fantasy novel, it just takes a little while to settle into the game’s world, and over time, I realized its characters are interconnected in ways that would slowly reveal themselves. After I bit my tongue in front of the merman, for example, he told me a surprising fact about my cleric’s past.
Esoteric Ebb’s introduction is actually signed by Bodegård, and he says that “we’ll play” for about “5 to 8 sessions.” It sets the tone that you’re in the hands of a capable Dungeon Master who has worked hard to craft an entertaining campaign but who will also work with your wildest instincts to create an interesting journey. Bodegård succeeds, heartily. As I neared the end of the game, I was so caught up in the story — and seeking out every ridiculous situation that I could — that I was racing to see it to the end.
Esoteric Ebb is now available on Steam.
