$24.99Esoteric Ebb A cleric investigates a very odd murder
Esoteric Ebb is a hand-drawn isometric CRPG that reads like a very talky visual novel with dice. You are The Cleric, sent to solve a tea-shop explosion days before an election, joined by a goblin sidekick. Expect long branching conversations, arguing inner voices, and choices that come back to bite you.
Is Esoteric Ebb worth it?
Esoteric Ebb is worth it if…
- you like visual novels where dialogue and choices drive everything
- you enjoy funny, surreal mysteries with political scheming
- you like arguing inner voices and replaying for different routes
Screenshots
Long talks where choices stick
This is mostly reading and choosing what kind of cleric to be. You question suspects, debate devils and drunk sphinxes, juggle factions, and pick an election vote that follows you around. Dialogues branch wide, with low and high-stakes quests across streets, towers, and tunnels. Failure is part of the fun too: botched dice rolls for wrestling dwarves, stealing, or saving face can open stranger, funnier paths than success.
A head full of arguing stats
Your ability stats never stay quiet. Each one has its own conflicting view and interrupts conversations to push its agenda, so you are always debating yourself while you debate everyone else. The Questing Tree ties this together as quest log, skill tree, and mind map at once, with quest branches that take root and change how The Cleric plays through new feats. For visual novel readers, it works like rival inner narrators fighting to steer the route.
Magic, mystery, and a goblin sidekick
You investigate an impossible mystery with no official backup, starting awake in a morgue with river water in your boots, rotting apples, corpses, and one zombie. Your Cleric tools add unusual dialogue options: control minds, detect secrets in tunnels or thoughts, and speak with the living or dead. Turn-based encounters exist, but violence is a last resort and dice decide life or death. The colorful, surreal city of Norvik carries it, where mythological creatures sell newspapers at corner shops.
What should visual novel readers know?
How much reading is it, really?
A lot. Conversations, interrogations, and inner debates are the core loop, with exploration and dice rolls in support. There is no voice acting, so expect walls of hand-drawn, joke-dense text. If you like settling in with a long route and rereading options before you commit, the pace suits you.
Do your choices change the story?
Yes, in both plot and playstyle. Alliances shift, factions remember how you play them against each other, and quests can resolve in wonderfully ridiculous ways depending on stats and feats. You can end up the city's savior, its demise, or bumble into power, plus decide your election vote.
Who is the goblin sidekick?
Your constant companion through the investigation, there to needle you, back you up, and make bad plans sound reasonable. The dynamic is classic straight-man chaos: you are the glorified government goon with reality-shaping magic, and the goblin keeps the banter sharp while factions, devils, and sphinxes try to use you both.
