Best moment in the entire game: my goblin companion asked where I lived, I admitted I still lived with my mom, instantly suffered catastrophic shame damage, failed my saving throws, and died. I was literally killed by a cringe in a dialogue. 10/10. Absolute cinema. Extremely realistic, considering this happens to me constantly in real life.
Actually it happened three times from the same save file, and at that point I figured maybe I should stop discussing my mommy issues with random people because apparently nothing good comes from it.

But, anyway. You know what Esoteric Ebb absolutely is not? A tiny little “weekend text adventure.” The script alone is over 750,000 words. That’s more than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

It’s also not Disco Elysium, despite clearly belonging to the growing species of “Disco-likes.” The vibe here is, unexpectedly, a sweet and slightly deranged great-granddaughter of Planescape: Torment. The game is stuffed with chunky references. My favorite is a flexible sword that changes form after you take an alignment test. It’s basically the Zerth Blade from Torment, which evolved depending on your morality and worldview. And in Torment we woke up in the Mortuary, while here the game also starts with us being murdered, and also... alright, I’ll stop dragging you back to 1999. But if you’re an old-school RPG goblin, Ebb has a very real chance of kicking the door to your heart open with both feet.

Everything feels weirdly familiar, like an old flannel duvet cover from childhood. There’s the classic D&D-style setup: classes, stats, spells, spell slots, resting, equipment. You can absolutely play it with a completely fresh perspective, and honestly isometric interactive novels are still one of the most accessible genres regardless of age or gaming experience. But if you’ve spent a couple decades throwing D20s, there’s something deeply comforting about how the game turns into this intimate little module about a cleric investigating an explosion at a tea shop right before an election.

Very quickly you realize the game isn’t really about detective work, or investigations, or even dice rolls. It’s about who we want to vote for and whether that means anything at all against the backdrop of ancient gods, endless historical cycles, and monumental cosmic horror. And honestly, the funniest part is how much time you spend trapped in internal dialogues like: “Okay, I’ve learned about feminism. What do I think about feminism? Is the glass ceiling cool or am I supposed to fight it? And how?” Or: “Nationalism sounds good, right? Strong statehood, don’t let the dwarves and their unions rock the boat... or wait, no?”

Our protagonist, Ragn, this awkward, lonely young cleric disaster of a human being, is deeply confused by all of it. And not just politics. The game is full of moments of delight and awkwardness. You can learn Speak with Animals and interrogate a cat as a witness. You can lecture drunk teenagers about how interracial relationships are beautiful, or beat them up and recruit them into cadet school. You can flirt with a sphinx who got disappointed in life and men and turned into a wine aunt.

And meanwhile your brain is constantly swarming with things like: “Okay, immigration. How do I feel about immigration?” followed by eleven dialogue options. You can even discuss gender as a social construct with the local equivalent of Jung, apologize to your goblin friend for the genocide of goblins, or refuse to apologize because, you know, “good genocide, would do again.”

Yes, it’s all slightly caricatured. The free-market fanatics in this setting are so aggressively libertarian that they openly support slavery because slaves are valuable commodities. But without exaggeration the game would just be a dry political manifesto nobody would finish. Instead we get this phenomenally talkative, cozy, emotionally engaging cringe-fest with dice rolls.

Massive lumberjack-looking dudes online keep saying they cried during the ending, when Ragn admits that since childhood he only ever had one wish, one thing he prayed for his entire life. I didn’t cry there, though, because I accidentally found out what the wish was during character creation.
The game isn’t as relentlessly bleak as Disco Elysium. We’re not operating on “senile grandmas scavenging through trash cans while alcoholics freeze to death on the docks, communists shot us all, capitalists let us all down” levels of despair. But when Ebb gets sad, it genuinely hurts. The emotional palette here feels human and balanced instead of being entirely filtered through Raphael Ambrosius Costeau’s existential collapse and self-inflicted psychic warfare.

I feel like every game I love lately becomes “game of the year” in my eyes, but E. Ebb genuinely feels like a little beam of sunlight nobody should skip. It’s also an excellent opportunity to figure out your political stance on dwarven labor unions, goblin genocide, and why nine out of ten guildmasters are human men. Which honestly feels valuable in a sandbox RPG like this. Having political opinions is easy. Calmly and coherently explaining them is a much rarer skill.

The visual style is gorgeous too. I even bought the game at full price. The sphinx’s paw alone was worth the money. She is so precious, oh my god, why can't we be together. *cries while eating apples*

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