Esoteric Ebb

Written by Randy Kalista on 3/23/2026 for PC  

Not halfway through the character creation screen, I’m floored by the dry, ironwrought wit of the writing. I can choose among premade characters. One is Beefy Cleric (they’re all clerics of some sort). But along with the usual ability scores you’d find on any Dungeons & Dragons character sheet—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma—a short, pithy description of the Beefy Cleric says, “Yes. More apples, appleboy,” and shows what is indeed a beefy cleric laying on piles of Red Delicious like he’s a dragon passed out on a horde of gold coins.

But it’s the strong and wise Primal Cleric that I select, asking, “What is the nature of man?” This is neither the first nor last indication of Esoteric Ebb’s heavy Disco Elysium influences. Influence? This is more of a direct progeny. More like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, appleboy.

I am impressed by my Mandalorian-like devotion to never remove my helm. My Intelligence is a skull with its brain exposed, all aflutter with a Shakespearean ruffle of book pages.

The Stranger Things lite soundtrack is all new age harps and snare brushes and guitar pedal distortion…tinged with the caw of seagulls or an occasional guitar stab if the combat calls for it. Quite possibly the best lo-fi soundtrack since Minecraft.

The minute-to-minute of Esoteric Ebb has you clicking around a gorgeously illustrated city. Its regions are rich and detailed, but still take deep breaths between features. The game is mostly dialogue. And by mostly, I mean it’s a lot, but in bite-sized batches. The back and forth of conversation is snappy, whether you’re arguing with your Constitution, ignoring your Intelligence, or plowing ahead with your Strength—and that’s only the inner monologuing.

Engaging in conversation with NPCs yields even more words-per-minute than you’re consuming. Sometimes the dialogue trees go on for so long that it can be quite some time before the Save Game button is no longer grayed out. That’s one of my few mechanical complaints with the game at all: Sometimes you’re up to your eyeballs in dialogue, with trees that can scramble out a dozen directions at times. When you’re locked into dialogue, you’re locked out of saving the game. Cutting off the chit-chat in order to save scum feels disingenuous, but sometimes it’s your only option when Life Happens (tm) outside of the game.

The video game explains itself quite well. Except that the video game is made up of a lot of D&D—which it doesn’t explain at all. Cantrips; Difficulty Checks; V, S, and M spell components, which stands for verbal, somatic, and material. And if you’re like me, you then have to look up what “somatic” means again.

Fascinatingly, abilities like Constitution and Dexterity don’t just play a role when it comes to hit points and armor class. They mold and manipulate conversations and encounters in ways that, sometimes, have nothing to do with swinging swords or piercing armor.

It’s taking me some time to discern if I’m supposed to methodically click through every—single—dialogue—option. Or if I’m to navigate between them like swinging a sword.

Skill checks come at you fast, and many rely on your passive ability score. A passive check happens when a roll of the die isn’t called for, so the game just peaks at your 10 Wisdom or 18 Dexterity or what have you, then decides if you’ve passed the Difficulty Check without tossing a 20-sided die. Reminder that this game would love it if you showed up for class having a cursory knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons terminology. If not, it’ll break it to you gently. This isn’t Baldur’s Gate 3 or something that is explicitly trying to recreate a game of tabletop D&D on your screen. But Esoteric Ebb also isn’t wasting time coming up with its own gameplay mechanics and system dynamics for your interactions. Again, it may not look like it from the bright colors and clean-lined animation style, but if you’re playing Esoteric Ebb, you’re playing D&D.

This is especially apparent during combat. While combat takes a more “theater of the mind” approach in naratively describing each swing of the sword or casting of a spell, having combat take place in your head rather than by dashing, flanking, and attacking on a gridded battlemap, it still means you’re playing D&D.

The introduction wakes you up in a circular morgue, unarmed but with a lot of reading to do, and a nagging sense that you’re not quite dead enough to be in a morgue in the first place…All of this has notes of ‘90s classic computer role-playing game Planescape: Torment.

At some point, my guy, a cleric, a servant of a god—unclear whether living or dead—is confused by his state of being and says, “Perhaps there is an esoteric explanation to all of this.” And that is my first inkling of what they could possibly mean by naming this game Esoteric Ebb. Later, the meaning of “Esoteric” is revealed to be the magic of (possibly) a god and his living instrument strings.

I began to grasp the density of the bureaucracies crushing this city when the first living person I meet—never mind the zombie in the basement—begins citing multiple organizations with inexplicable acronyms. Though I do feel a bit out of control. I have to loosen my grip on results. Like when my inner Strength gave me little choice but to do a “Full. Body. Contact.” takedown of a smart but otherwise harmless mortician.

The narrative moves at a decent clip along the right hand side. Much like a virtual tabletop does, with dice rolls and snippets of chit chat scrolling upward. I scrolls up with one failed Intelligence, Wisdom, and Strength check at a time.

It’s a strange premise: Investigating a structural explosion, days before an election, and asking so many people what they know or what they care about either of those topics.

At a certain point, I proclaim to an irritable kobold that I, too, don’t like milk. I am savaged by my inner voices for making such a proclamation.

There’s the push-and-pull of being a cleric—The Cleric—that is excited by quest and adventure, while many of the citizens of the city have no inclination to involve themselves in such worrisome tasks.

There’s no Paragon vs. Renegade morality meter. Rather, your travels and interactions simply paint a fuller picture of yourself. Rogue or Cleric? Nationalist or Apolitical? It would be very hard for Commander Shepard to define themselves along these lines.

With my Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma constantly conversing in me, it’s like I’m playing the movie Inside Out in my D&D head.

The Questing tab has ever-growing connections to ever-increasing thought bubbles. Democratization somehow leads to being Milkurious. Three Hundred Pieces of gold and Class Conflict both come back to relate to some point that I have not yet learned. I would appreciate a little bit more signposting when a new thought bubble appears around me. They’re just harder and harder to spot in a crowd, the more that show up.

Once I met the “dragon in the dungeon” (it’s not what you might think), then the investigation ballooned. Names, faces, clues, questions.

Chasing down the mainline story is very doable. But you’ll uncover plenty of sidequest material along the way, intentionally or not. Solving The Cleric’s mystery—the case of the blown up tea shop—will take approximately 24 hours of gameplay; 36 for completionists. There’s very little fat, however, trimming away anything that isn’t rather directly related to world- and character-building. There are opportunities to meander as well; just enough to keep the neatly carved locations, but rarely was I lost.

My first companion is a handsome goblin in a purple robe, or a double breasted jacket, I’m not sure which. That’s definitely a gold chain he’s wearing, though. And from every angle, he looks like Matt Mercer. Maybe I just see what I want to see. Conversing with him, however, has hit me with multiple friendly-fire shots—all from conversing about embarrassing topics.

The places you visit are bizarre. Like the pillar in the center of town that is described as going forever up…though it also goes forever down. Or the tavern whose main attraction isn’t its wine or its lutist, but a large sphynx whose deep well of understanding spans galaxies. If you discover the logistics to carry on a meaningful physical relationship with such a magnificent creature, send me an email.

I equipped esoteric (magic) items to find a balance, even as each ability grew. I stopped carrying the News in Norvik newspaper and equipped a Resistance Note when an increase in Strength outweighed my need for Charisma. I never wore the Tattered Cloak for the Dexterity gains when the Movable Rod did the same thing without a further hit to my Charisma. And so on.

Even narrative-heavy games need frame rate notes, as well as a discussion of bugs, crashes, the aforementioned system-save behavior, and controller feel. It’s largely good news. Everything moves like butter melting in a pan; the game literally kept me in the dark one time on a reload, then sprung back to visible life when I stumbled into a secret door. It hasn’t crashed once, though a quick succession of failed Death Saving Throws (another D&D term) can make it feel like something slapped you with a you-died screen before you’re expecting it. And the gamepad movements feel incredible, though, even more amazingly, I’m enjoying mouse and keyboard on this one despite WASD being my least favorite control scheme. In short, performance and technical stability is top notch.

Earlier I’d made comparisons to Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment. But to frame that comparison, Esoteric Ebb is neither derivative or evolutionary. While it operates like the award-winning Disco Elysium, Esoteric Ebb tells its own story, top to bottom, which is what matters most in such a narrative-heavy adventure-game genre. I will concede that it is innovative, however, in just how much legitimate Dungeons & Dragons has made it into this game. Not so strict that you’ll confuse it for a Wizards of the Coast release (that’s D&D’s publisher). But D&D fans will be pleasantly surprised. At least I was.

Esoteric Ebb is for those that aren’t afraid to click the silly dialogue option from time to time. It’s for those that desperately want to cast Speak With Animals on a stray black cat. For those that rather prefer their impatient goblin companion to yes-men automatons. And it’s for those willing to take the bad rolls with the good. You’re reminded many times that low dice rolls can sometimes produce more entertaining results than an endless succession of, well, success. Dungeon Masters know this well. See if you can tap into your own inner Dungeon Master to understand and appreciate this truth.

Because the world is made up of both achievement and defeat, and Esoteric Ebb is worse off if you experience only one side of that equation.