It took me a while to get into Esoteric Ebb, a new CRPG from developer Christoffer Bodegård. The elevator pitch is basically Disco Elysium, but in the fantasy style of Dungeons & Dragons: You play as a cleric wandering around a small town who's trying to figure out, among other things, the mystery of why a tea shop in town exploded, and all the while, you're having conversations with different character traits in your head. Like Disco Elysium, you see the world from an isometric, top-down perspective. Also like Disco Elysium, Esoteric Ebb requires a lot of reading, weighing the opinions of your competing voices, and making some bold dice rol … Read the full story at The Verge.
Tech
Playing Esoteric Ebb is like rolling the dice with a great DM
A throwback CRPG, *Esoteric Ebb*, weaponizes procedural dice rolls and internal monologue mechanics to force players into high-stakes narrative gambles—mirroring *Disco Elysium*’s psychological depth but with D&D’s fantasy scaffolding. Its isometric world hides a tea-shop explosion mystery where every dialogue choice hinges on competing personality traits, turning stat checks into existential dilemmas. The result? A rare fusion of tabletop unpredictability and literary ambition. AI-assisted, human-reviewed.