Become the world’s worst cleric, speak to the dead or pick a fight with sea birds in this Monty Python-esque magical mystery from Swedish developer Christoffer Bodegård
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ungeons & Dragons is a rich playground of fantastical tales where warriors, wizards and elves can take on monstrous foes for unimaginable spoils … or you can spend an entire evening completely undermining your dungeon master by killing off important characters, focusing on unrelated items and improvising your own disastrous adventure. This is often where the best stories are and where Esoteric Ebb takes its inspiration.
Part tabletop game, part RPG, you play as a cleric who has been sent to investigate the destruction of a tea shop in the city Norvik, which is about to hold its first ever election in five days. You’ll talk (and occasionally fight) with the local residents to uncover the truth and affect the outcome of the election. Or perhaps you’ll just fight some seagulls. You can choose your own path, but, much like in D&D, your success comes down to dice rolls and having to live with the consequences if you fail them.
“Every single choice available in the game is something that I anticipated,” says writer and developer Christoffer Bodegård. It’s particularly impressive because every interaction in even a tiny area of the game feels so open-ended. All of the dialogue choices and touching of random objects have been thoughtfully considered by Bodegård to give the feeling of freedom in a confined space. The experience of playing D&D and your players doing unexpected things has come together in the game.
