Esoteric Ebb Is D&D Meets Disco Elysium

March 26, 2026·1 hr 15 min·7 clips

Imagine Disco Elysium crossed with D&D, but written by the author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

A role-playing game can be a lot. Kirk starts with the pleasure of real choices and characters who stick, especially when a protagonist can get so embarrassed that it kills him. Esoteric Ebb gets a warm read here. The panel calls it a political parable, accepts the Disco Elysium comparison, and still leaves space for it to be its own thing. The opening sounds crowded on purpose. One speaker describes getting hit with names, history, and factions until the player slowly builds a frame of reference that can hold it all. Then the fog starts to lift. Once Tolstad, the Golden Horde, and the fight over the future begin to connect, the game seems to get simpler instead of more tangled. That contrast gives the episode its best stretch. Baldur's Gate 3 becomes the useful comparison because it starts smaller, with a familiar conflict, a few encounters, and a scope that widens bit by bit. Esoteric Ebb moves the other way. It drops the big political and historical picture early, then pays off the player who stays with it long enough for that picture to settle. The group sounds sympathetic without selling too hard. They know this can push people away, especially players who hate being thrown into unfamiliar proper nouns. Fantasy readers may have an easier time. Still, the panel suggests the game asks for trust, the kind where another player saying "stick with it" might actually help. Underneath the jokes is a clean design point. Not every game needs to be instantly efficient, frictionless, or easy to read. That point lands sideways, in the usual Triple Click way. The conversation stays casual, specific, and lightly wry, using Baldur's Gate 3 to make Esoteric Ebb clearer without turning it into a plain recommendation.

As heard by us

A smart Triple Click discussion of how Esoteric Ebb turns political density into RPG clarity.

Triple Click's Esoteric Ebb episode is at its best when it treats the game as a design problem, not just a recommendation. Kirk Hamilton, Maddie Myers, and Jason Schreier frame it as a political RPG with obvious Disco Elysium echoes, then spend the sharper stretch on how its…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a smart RPG chat about embarrassment, politics, and a very strange world.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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