Esoteric Ebb just got an accolades trailer showing off its 90/100 PC Gamer score

Publisher Raw Fury has released a new accolades trailer for the PC role-playing game Esoteric Ebb, highlighting high review scores following its March launch. Critics from DualShockers and VDGMS awarded the game a 9/10, and PC Gamer gave it a 90/100. The game is available now on Steam.

Developed entirely by Christoffer Bodegård under the studio name Sudden Snail, the game puts players in the role of a government cleric. The main objective is investigating a tea shop explosion in the fantasy city of Norvik. The city happens to be exactly five days away from its first democratic election. You navigate this political mess alongside a goblin sidekick named Snell.

Dropping the combat

Bodegård originally spent four years trying to build a traditional combat system for his ideal RPG. After playing Disco Elysium in 2019, he realized he could drop the combat entirely. Esoteric Ebb relies almost exclusively on tabletop dialogue mechanics instead of physical fights.

The system uses a virtual 20-sided die for skill checks. Your character's six primary stats (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma) act as internal voices. They interrupt conversations, offer conflicting advice, and argue with each other directly.

A high intelligence stat might provide useful historical context, or it might just make your character overthink a simple interaction with a bartender. Players can talk to giant multi-eyed monsters in the sewers and heavily armored knights in the city streets. Magic spells are tied to narrative choices rather than damage output. You can use spells to read the minds of political rivals or detect hidden passages under the city.

The 2024 timeline quirk

The new promotional video includes a strange timeline discrepancy. The final splash screen displays an "Available Now" graphic with a 2024 date, but references 2026 in both a critic quote and the copyright notice.

The game actually launched on March 3, 2026. The 2024 date is likely a leftover asset from the game's highly successful Steam Next Fest demo, which ran in early 2024 and helped secure the publishing deal with Raw Fury. Bodegård left the old date in the video as a stylistic joke.

The setting is officially described as post-Arcanepunk. Mythological creatures run corner stores and political ideologies have replaced the worship of dead gods. The impending election forces players to ask nearly every non-player character about their voting intentions, tying the murder mystery directly to the city's political factions.

Progression is handled through a system called the Questing Tree. This interface combines a traditional quest log, a skill tree, and a mind map into a single screen. Completing specific quest branches unlocks new game-changing feats that alter how the Cleric interacts with the world. You can customize the character's background at the start of the game, trading physical strength for agility or raw charisma.

A standard playthrough takes around 25 hours. Reading every piece of text and failing the right dice rolls can push that number closer to 50 hours. Anyone looking for a combat-heavy dungeon crawler should look elsewhere, but players who want to argue with their own character's wisdom stat have a solid new option.