Esoteric Ebb

In the game, the player controls the "world's worst cleric", after they wake up from some incident that left them without any memories. They learn that their task is to uncover the reason for the explosion of a tea shop in the city of Norvik, five days before a major election.^[1]

The game is presented in an isometric view with the player moving the cleric between points of interest, including non-player characters (NPCs) to initiate dialog. The cleric also engages with inner dialog by the voices of six attributes, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, and Charisma. These dialog trees can lead to skill checks, where the player rolls a 20-sided die to resolve, boosted by attributes and bonuses granted by equipment they have gained. Other factors of the games, such as spells and recovery, following from the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) rules.^[2]

Esoteric Ebb was developed by Swedish developer Christoffer Bodegård. He had been inspired by D&D campaigns he and his friends had played, putting together first a design document for his ideal RPG, and then setting out to actually develop it even though he knew the scope was large. After about four years he had completed enough to know his approach to exploration and social interactions were in place, but was struggling with combat, and decided to put the project down. About three months later, in 2019, Disco Elysium was released, which was an RPG that lacked combat but instead resolved conflicts through skill checks. Bodegård recognized this approach would fit with his concept, and spent about a month and a half playing Disco Elysium to research for his game, inspired by both the approach to writing but its non-linear structure.^[3][4]

By 2022, Bodegård had prototypes that he felt had come together, and teased the game within Disco Elysium forums to get feedback, where while generally positive, cautioned him that it looked too similar to Disco Elysium.^[4] He crafted a demo, released in early 2024, to seek interest. A review of the demo by PC Gamer^[1] led to the game being picked up by Raw Fury, helping Bodegård to cover his living expenses and outsource freelance artists from a local incubator to help create the game's assets.^[3] That allowed Bodegård to focus on the writing and dialog, trying to make a humorous game that still focused on serious themes, such as the moral and legal implication of a "Charm Person" spell.^[4] Bodegård estimated that by the end of development, he had written over 1.25 million words for the game, 300,000 words by an early prototype, and the remaining in creating the full game.^[3]

Esoteric Ebb received "generally favorable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.^[5] Fellow review aggregator OpenCritic assessed that the game received "mighty" approval, being recommended by 100% of critics.^[6]