Esoteric Ebb

Tabletop players know the moment. The game master calls for a Charisma check, the table goes quiet, and one twenty-sided die decides whether the guard waves the party through or reaches for a sword. Esoteric Ebb is built to capture that moment. It is a single-player isometric CRPG from solo developer Christoffer Bodegård, published by Raw Fury and released for Windows on March 3, 2026. Its stated goal is to adapt a tabletop RPG session into a narrative video game.

The player is The Cleric, a government enforcer who handles esoteric incidents. The story opens in a morgue in Norvik, a strange post-Arcanepunk fantasy city where factions are competing for power ahead of its first-ever election. That is a smart premise for a dialogue game. An election gives every faction a reason to lie, a reason to recruit the protagonist and a reason to remember what the protagonist did. A cleric on the state payroll sits uneasily between faith and bureaucracy, so every conversation carries a second question about loyalty.

The positioning is just as clear. Esoteric Ebb sits at the combat-light end of the CRPG spectrum. Investigation and conversation make up most of the game, and fights are a fallback. The game invites comparison to Disco Elysium, and its structure follows that template closely. Its distinguishing bet is the ruleset: the six D&D ability scores, d20 checks, and 5th edition spell and rest rules. Tabletop players already know that vocabulary.

The bet is coherent. Tabletop players already know the vocabulary, and the game leans on that familiarity rather than teaching every rule from scratch. The risk is that the same vocabulary narrows the audience: newcomers must learn 5e’s conventions while also learning a city, a cast and a political situation.

• d20 Skill Checks: Persuasion, theft, dungeon crawling and fights all resolve on a twenty-sided die, modified by attributes and gear.
• Six Arguing Ability Scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma speak as inner voices that argue with one another and interrupt conversations.
• 5th Edition Spells and Rest: Magic and recovery follow D&D 5e rules. Spells can control minds, detect secrets and open conversations with the living and the dead.
• The Questing Tree: A single structure combines the quest log, skill tree and mind map. Finishing quest branches unlocks feats that change how the Cleric plays.
• Combat as a Last Resort: Turn-based fights exist, but the design pushes toward creative, non-violent solutions.
• Lasting Consequences: Decisions persist and can make the Cleric a savior, a menace or a power-hungry bumbler.

The Loop: Talk, Roll, Accept the Result

Investigation and conversation fill most of Esoteric Ebb, and nearly every meaningful attempt resolves the same way: a d20 roll adjusted by attributes and equipment. One mechanic covers persuasion, theft, dungeon crawling and combat, which makes the game unusually consistent. Players do not learn one system for talking and another for sneaking. Everything runs on one die and a stack of modifiers.

Every dice-driven narrative game has to decide what failure costs. A d20 creates drama only if a bad roll produces story instead of a reload. The range of promised outcomes, from savior to menace to power-hungry bumbler, shows that the game treats failure and poor judgement as valid paths. The design’s reactivity supports that reading. Letting gear modify checks is a smart choice too. Equipment counts in conversation as well as in combat, so inventory decisions carry into dialogue.

Six Stats, Six Mouths

The distinctive idea is turning ability scores into inner voices. Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma argue with each other and interrupt conversations, so the character sheet becomes a cast of characters. Six is a good number. A small cast forces each voice to have a distinct personality, and D&D’s ability scores already come with shorthand every tabletop player recognizes. Anyone who has played knows how a brawny, low-Wisdom character talks before the game writes a single line.

The risk is noise. An interrupting voice is welcome only when the interruption earns its place, and constant inner commentary can slow scenes that need momentum. A script this dense will not land every beat; the voices need to justify their interruptions, and some scenes will sag under the commentary.

Fifth Edition, Imported Wholesale

Adopting D&D 5e’s spell and rest rules is a consequential design decision. Under those rules, spells are a limited resource that resting restores, so investigative magic becomes an economy. Controlling a mind, detecting a secret and questioning the dead are all ways to gather clues. Putting them on a budget forces the player to choose which lead deserves a spell and which deserves a conversation. That is a more interesting use of 5e’s resource model than another fireball.

The trade-off is onboarding friction. Tabletop veterans will understand the systems immediately. Newcomers have to absorb a rulebook’s worth of conventions, and a narrative game that teaches rest mechanics before the player understands the city leads with its least interesting material. That may partly explain the slow opening.

The Questing Tree

Combining the quest log, skill tree and mind map into one structure is a consolidation more narrative RPGs should try. Progression comes from finishing quest branches, which unlock feats that change how the Cleric plays. The reward for following a storyline is a new capability, not a bigger number. Growth is tied to narrative choices instead of kill counts, a progression model that fits a game where combat is a fallback. The cost is density. One screen doing three jobs has to work hard to stay readable, and how well it manages that decides whether the Tree feels elegant or cluttered.

Violence as a Fallback

Turn-based combat exists, but the design treats it as a last resort and rewards creative, non-violent solutions. Because feats come from finishing quest branches, progression does not depend on fighting, so avoiding combat is not a self-imposed handicap. That alignment of incentives matters. Anyone buying an isometric CRPG for tactical encounters should take “last resort” literally. This is a game about talking, and its fights are the price of a conversation that went wrong.

The Disco Elysium Question

The obvious criticism is how closely the structure follows Disco Elysium, and it is a fair one. A game this dependent on one predecessor’s template invites a comparison it cannot fully escape. Two things set Esoteric Ebb apart: its tone and its ruleset. The game takes itself less seriously, and the fact that “power-hungry bumbler” is a possible outcome shows it is willing to laugh at its own protagonist. Building on D&D 5e also gives it a mechanical identity that a simple reskin would not have. The skeleton is borrowed, but the muscle is its own. The borrowing still limits its originality.

Where It Stumbles

Apart from the Disco Elysium comparison, the main weaknesses are a slow opening and some clunky or uneven moments. Neither is surprising. An opening set in a morgue that also has to introduce six voices, 5e conventions and a field of competing factions is front-loaded by design. Rough patches are the expected cost of a dialogue-heavy script written by a single developer. Those flaws matter, but they do not sink the game. Players who struggle with dense, text-first openings should expect to need patience early on.

In a game where most of the play is reading, the interface carries the visual work. It has to show clearly which of the six voices is speaking, display roll outcomes and modifiers without hiding them, and keep the Questing Tree readable as it fills up. The isometric viewpoint is the genre’s standard for good reason. It presents the city as a navigable diorama and keeps the camera out of the way of the text. The “post-Arcanepunk” label suggests a city living in the aftermath of a magical-industrial era, which offers more texture and decay than a standard fantasy capital.

A dialogue-driven isometric game from a solo developer is unlikely to strain hardware. The visual burden falls on the interface: readable text, clear roll feedback and a Questing Tree that stays legible as it grows. Those are design problems before they are performance problems.

Esoteric Ebb is sold on Steam for Windows, so there are no console or mobile versions to compare. The interface is built for mouse and keyboard, which suits an isometric, text-heavy game. Pricing is $24.99. We judge value on the depth of the systems and the amount of story branching rather than on spectacle.

Esoteric Ebb takes a borrowed structure and runs it on the full D&D 5e rules, from d20 checks to spell budgets to rests, aimed at investigation and politics instead of dungeons and loot. The six ability-score voices give that system personality. The Questing Tree ties progression to finished stories. The range of outcomes, from savior to bumbler, gives the dice something worth deciding. The weaknesses are real: the opening is slow, the script has rough patches, and the Disco Elysium comparison follows it everywhere. None of that erases what one developer has built, a CRPG where a well-timed Charisma check matters more than a sword. It is a good game with clear limits, and we recommend it to tabletop players and narrative-RPG fans who want a talk-first game with a sense of humor. Players who want combat first should look elsewhere.