Review

Esoteric Ebb

A single-player CRPG inspired by tabletop role-playing, played from an isometric view. You talk, make choices and roll dice to settle encounters, with a lot of text and narration. A goblin sidekick and a political conspiracy drive the plot, and your choices shape the campaign. Is it your kind of game?

CRPGStory-richTabletop-inspiredPC

Games like Esoteric Ebb

9/10

Game Avant verdict

A dialogue-first CRPG where inner voices, tabletop dice and reality-shaping magic make every conversation a system, at the price of a wall of text that action fans will bounce off.

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By GameAvant · Published Oct 7, 2026 · Updated Oct 9, 2026 · 18 min read

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IGDB

85%

15 ratings

Steam:

95%

8,802 reviews

Fits you if

you like story-rich CRPGs where dialogue, dice and choices matter more than combat.

Skip it if

you want action or are not up for a lot of reading.

Availability

Where to play

Steam

$24.99

Buy

Facts

Platforms: PC
Release date: March 3, 2026
Length: About 20 hours
Difficulty: 3/5 (estimated)
Genres: Role-playing (RPG) · Adventure · Indie
Themes: Fantasy · Comedy · Mystery
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric
Modes: Solo only
Languages: 1 languages
Text in your language: Yes
Steam Deck: Verified
Microtransactions: None

More about Esoteric Ebb

Esoteric Ebb is a single-player computer role-playing game built by Christoffer Bodegård and published by Raw Fury, reaching PC on 3 March 2026. It drops you into a political conspiracy unfolding in the city of Norvik, with a goblin companion at your side and a set of genuinely tabletop-style dice waiting to turn every ambitious plan you attempt into a real gamble with real consequences. The central thesis behind this review is straightforward: Esoteric Ebb is the most convincing argument in years that a role-playing game can place conversation itself at the absolute centre of the experience and still feel like a game being played, rather than a long illustrated novel with occasional stat checks bolted on for appearances. What makes that claim credible rather than simply generous is how deeply dialogue is wired into the game's actual mechanical systems, rather than sitting beside them as flavour text. Conversations are not simply branching trees of pre-written responses; they are resolved through the same tabletop-style dice mechanics that govern combat and exploration, meaning a persuasive argument can genuinely fail on a bad roll the same way a sword swing can, and a clever bluff can succeed against overwhelming odds the same way a lucky critical hit does elsewhere. Layered on top of that is a system of competing inner voices inside your own character's head, each representing a different instinct or personality trait, that argue with each other over how to approach a given conversation, sometimes actively working against the player's own stated intentions rather than simply offering dialogue options to choose between. That friction between what you want to say and what your character's own psyche is pushing you toward is where much of the game's genuine tension actually lives, far more than in any combat encounter. The writing itself has to carry an enormous share of the weight in a design built this heavily around text and conversation, and it holds up under that pressure. Norvik's political conspiracy unfolds through dialogue that rewards close reading rather than skimming toward the next objective marker, and the game trusts players to track competing factions, hidden motivations, and slowly accumulating consequences entirely through conversation rather than through a simplified quest log doing the thinking for them. That same commitment is also the game's single biggest risk, and the review would be dishonest to soften it. This is a genuinely text-dense, dialogue-first design that makes no concessions whatsoever for players expecting spectacle, fast combat, or a lighter reading load. If engaging deeply with written dialogue and internal character conflict is the actual appeal for you, very few recent CRPGs make as strong a case for that specific kind of play as Esoteric Ebb does. If dense text is an obstacle rather than a draw, no amount of genuinely clever system design underneath it will change that experience, and this review says so plainly rather than hedging around a limitation that is baked into the game's entire identity.