Oscar Westberg's illustration above accurately depicts how I'm feeling right now. We're all barreling through the streets of Norvik, soaring and crashing our way to the finish line. And it's been one hell of a journey.
I didn't expect Ebb to be this huge. Since I'm doing all the writing and design solo, it was always a question of pacing myself - to make sure I didn't bite off too much of that wonderful CRPG sandwich. However, I did not pace myself. Instead I went head-on into keyboard-rolling and player-agency-driven wild content-creation. That, ultimately, has led to what Ebb is today: an absolutely huge game.
It takes over 40 hours of continuous playtime to finish a decently completionist run of Esoteric Ebb. Some of my playtesters have reported 50+ hours for a really hardcore deep-dive, but that really depends on reading speed - as well as if you play with high intelligence, and collect all the 600+ glossary entries. As for us regular mortals, going at average reading speeds? That'll end you at more like 25 hours. Why? Because EVERYTHING in Esoteric Ebb is dynamic, based on narrative variables, and dependent on your choices. If you wanted, you could easily complete the whole game in less than an hour, if you knew what to do, and got lucky on your rolls. You get to play Esoteric Ebb exactly how YOU want to play. If you wanna dive deep, go for it. If you wanna ruin the campaign - be my guest. I'm sure it'll be quite funny.
If you're playing the NEXT FEST DEMO - which is available RIGHT NOW - you'll have already seen what's in the first day of Ebb. A vast dungeon to explore. An underground port covered in grime and griffon (griffin?) feathers. Political conflicts raging in bureaucratic chaos. And a tea shop steeped in mystery and soot. But only a handful of quests are completable on that first day.
As you delve into those other four days remaining before the election, you'll find 16 Quest Branches on your own personal Questing Tree, each of which has anything between a handful to a dozen different solutions and outcomes. All depending on your stats, in which order you complete them, what your affiliations are, and a rather staggering number of minor variables each impacting the characters around you- as well as the DCs on all those dice checks. But those are just the major quests.
There are also 21 minor quests to track, as well as - and I genuinely had to go count these - over 40 untracked, secret tasks hidden throughout the game. Why secret? Well, some of them are esoteric journeys into the lore that only the more STRING-ATTUNED clerics will want to pursue. And some of them are just really stupid. Want to collect five rats and give them to the Slogdog salesman in the sewers? Sure. He didn't ask you to, but I'm not stopping you.
Oh, and for each Quest Branch you complete, you also get a choice of FEATS, which allow you to customize your cleric and playstyle. Want to be a blood mage, sucking your own HP dry to cast spells? Want to be immortal, except when you're at 1 HP? Maybe you're one of those 2d6 fans that want to bell-curve-stomp the d20 into the pavement? Or maybe you want a 1d4 heal every time you ask someone about their political beliefs? Customize your cleric! There are 51 feats in Esoteric Ebb.
It's INSANE. I don't know how I managed to implement all of this. I'm looking over the list now and it feels unreal. There are 43 characters with portraits. 74 if you count the ones without. Then there are 30 spells, implemented from 5e - with a few homebrew additions from my very own (so far unreleased) Esoteric 5e ruleset.
And so much music. Just the first volume of the Esoteric Ebb Original Soundtrack is over one and a half hours long. With the second volume, it's over three hours. But these are just the trimmed down, suitable-for-spotify-and-vinyl (which you can preorder here) versions. There are 89 tracks of music in-game, many of which are over thirty minutes long. Anders, Brian, and Kristian have produced and incredibly beautiful and truly esoteric soundtrack. And as a lot of writers say, music alone creates 50% of the emotions that we take credit for.
As for items, there are 164 items in Esoteric Ebb. And you can equip every single one. (Except the consumables. That was a bit too confusing for people. But I tried!) From a horror-magazine, to a broken piece of burnt wood, to a Scroll of Wish, to a filthy rag that got fished up from the river alongside you - you've got so much cool loot to play around with. And the most neat stuff, the stuff that sits in people's inventories? You can steal that, of course. Get any quest reward early and then demand something else in payment. Trifle through people's pockets for coins and then go donate it all to the performer at your local tavern. Or be a good cleric and don't do that stuff, since it's mean and evil, and so on. If you believe in that ontological stuff.
Just don't forget about your job: to solve the MYSTERY OF THE TEA SHOP THAT BLEW UP. But also, what are you voting in the election? And why did you end up in the river? And why is that weird pale guy acting so strange? And why aren't you allowed to even enter the tea shop? And why is there a celestial angel standing guard at the top of that shining hill? And why are there clues pointing towards your key witness literally everywhere?
Tackle this massive narrative in any way you wish. Dive through it all, or skim the surface. Go broad and interact with all the political factions- or just focus on one. Maybe two? There are 590 unique dialogs in Esoteric Ebb, each containing and interacting with several dozen Story Variables. I tried counting them all, just to have a fun number to point at here, but I was honestly unable to do it. There are simply too many variables in the game to count. I tried importing one of the completionist save files from a playtester in the epilogue, and found exactly 3294 Story Variables. The majority of which are just used for very minor stuff, like keeping track of which items you looted, and at which time, so that I'm able to write a unique reaction to it when relevant. But even still, ~800 of these are actively used in multiple quests, have unique dialog reactions tied to them, or completely alter dialogs in major ways.
Finally, there's the word count. I've been keeping track of exactly how much I've been writing over the course of development, and my total is up to 1 250 000 words. Only about 700 000 of those actually show up in the game though, after rewrites, editing, trimming... and general playtesting. As you can tell by this verbose post, I tend to ramble quite a bit. I also have a physical inability to stop writing. I've tried. I swear. My fingers just wither. It's true.
Anyway, now - finally - YOU get to make all of these choices. YOU get to loot all this loot. YOU get to customize your cleric. YOU get to solve the mystery and become a cleric of legends or completely ruin my poor, poor campaign.
Come join my table on March 3rd, 2026. We're gonna have one hell of a session.
New York, Beijing, and Skövde. The great metropolises of the world.
As for what you can do now...
If you haven't, go play the NEXT FEST DEMO right now! Then bring your SAVE FILE to launch - on March 3rd!
WIshlist Esoteric Ebb to get a little reminder - on March 3rd!
Follow me and check out my work on my website!
Check out my collaborators on the official website!
And once again - I'll see you on March 3rd.
-Christoffer Bodegård