I’ve only played one table-top RPG session in my life, and it didn’t go great. Despite the rude DM and a one-shot that haunts me to this day, I’m still enamoured by video games that so faithfully tap into the rulesets and world-building of the pen, the paper and the dice. We’re so familiar with the rules and tropes of video games that have become an implied bare-minimum for every release, but when a game goes out of its way to adapt the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset or mythos into the virtual world, it creates this challenging and unfamiliar box to play in that I adore. Baldur’s Gate 3 took the rules and world of the TTRPG and transformed them into a sweeping RPG epic. Esoteric Ebb, meanwhile, mixes those familiar structures with a unique, yet nostalgic world, creating an unforgettably charming and hilarious narrative adventure as a result.
At first glance, Esoteric Ebb looks like a cut-and-dry send-up of Disco Elysium. It certainly shares some core mechanical concepts – your small party size, the flow and nature of its branching dialogue, skill checks and equipment management and the like. Those tools are strapped onto an entirely original TTRPG-like ruleset, though. After building a character with a specific background preset and points allocated into Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, the game spells it out for you: this is a “campaign” set across “five to eight sessions” that will take you from level one to level six. Beyond just using the format of Dungeons & Dragons, Esoteric Ebb focuses on creating that sense of open, creative wonder you might get from literally sitting at the table or on a Discord session with a passionate, plotting DM.
Your character, initially, is locked into the path of a Cleric. A Cleric who is at the bottom of the ladder and has been assigned to a mysterious arson case in a busy city that will be having its first ever election in just five days. Your main goal, within those five days, is to find out how a tea shop in the middle of town exploded. It’s a task you could probably blitz through in just a few hours, but like many great RPGs, Esoteric Ebb throws winding webs of side-quests and unexpected encounters at you that make your initial journey through the game into dozens of hours of challenges and chaotic conversational tussles. They can seem overwhelming at first, until they all slowly come together to form a shared, shocking, and thrilling narrative.
Esoteric Ebb operates on a day/night cycle, and every choice you make in dialogue moves time forward by a minute. It’s a smart system that lets the time of day slowly march forward as you dig deeper into conversations, but gives you all the time in the world to explore and wander without feeling like there’s a countdown constantly ticking away. You’ll need to take full advantage of the changing tides of time to get as much info as possible – the bar is only open at night, for example, the boy at the news stand leaves after the morning, and certain major moments and encounters are only possible on specific days and during specific hours. You never quite feel like you’re given an “Option A or Option B” approach where you’re clearly missing out on a different half of the game, but like real life, you can never be everywhere at once and there’s often something unexpected happening in the places you chose not to visit.
What’s fun is that, with every little encounter or successful roll of the dice in a dialogue choice, you also get a bit of experience. That drip-feed of reward as lengthy conversations roll on really helped keep me feeling like I was making progress and building towards something bigger. It isn’t just jingling keys, though, because when you do level up, it lets you access stronger spells, increase your health, and add more skill points to your character. That last part was pretty important to me, because I built a Charisma and Wisdom focused cleric who was convinced he was actually a Rogue and had barely any Strength to his name. As a result, climbing a ladder was like scaling Mt. Everest for me.
It’s so easy to get sucked into the world of Esoteric Ebb and just feel like you’re really in it. Some of that magic comes from the gorgeous soundscapes and ambient music that drift in and out of earshot as you play. It also comes from how truly open-ended and rewarding all your choices are. Collecting so many items, weapons, and helmets and being able to actually equip them and see them on my character just adds so much life to the roleplaying experience.
Esoteric Ebb is a really fascinating, gripping, and incredible game. There’s so much life in its world, and so many options in how you can explore it. I had an incredible time creating my sickly Rogue Cleric with an identity crisis, and it’s enhanced by knowing that my character and the journey he went on are just one of so many possibilities in the game. I’m excited to see what other players end up experiencing, and I’m excited to dig back into it myself and see how different my next journey is too.
