PSA: There's A New Contender For Best Disco-Like

Since Disco Elysium first launched in 2019, we’ve seen the rise of a new subgenre: the Disco-like. For a genre so specific, it’s quite broad – Disco Elysium is such a mechanically and thematically complex game that it’s easy to see its influence in games as different as Citizen Sleeper and Norco.

It’s also such an iconic game that we’ve seen a rush of studios all claiming they’re making spiritual sequels, as if spiritual sequels to the game aren’t already everywhere.

Esoteric Ebb is, without a doubt, a Disco-like in the most faithful sense of the word. It’s clear that developer Christoffer Bodegård has taken most of Disco’s systems and reinterpreted them within a setting that skews much closer to Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t say that as criticism, necessarily – while the gameplay, tone, and themes do feel eerily close to the game we already know and love, I’m completely enraptured by it.

A Very Disco Sense Of Humour

From its opening moments, Esoteric Ebb feels like Disco Elysium. You create a character by picking stats (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, et cetera) and a background, which is much closer to D&D, except all the backgrounds are weird and kind of foreboding. One details how you had to get an after-school job working with newspapers in some capacity, while another says you were never able to make friends. Or you can pick one that has already been made up for you, of which there are several to choose from.

I picked a Trickster Cleric from the pre-built characters, because I was feeling lazy.

You’re then tossed into an intro with a black screen and text scrolling on the right. An unfamiliar voice asks you questions, and your stats, which act like Disco Elysium’s skills, start yapping at you and at each other. As your dialogue choices force you to roll to succeed or fail, these stats guide you towards your ultimate responses. These voices are often antagonistic towards you, mocking you or making tongue-in-cheek comments. Again, it’s all very Disco.

You can click highlighted words in dialogue to roll checks and see if you can get more information on them, which is a wonderful way of providing the player with more exposition about this strange world your character wakes up in.

After a gorgeous (Esoteric Ebb is expertly cel-shaded and a feast for the eyes) introductory cinematic where your character sinks into deep, dark water, you wake up in a morgue and words flash across the screen, indicating that this is the first day. Of how many? What happens when time runs out? That’s not your problem right now. You’ve just died and come back to life.

Every scene feels richly detailed, full of items to examine, interact with, and pocket (“behold”, “trifle” and “engage” respectively), but I was more focused on the game’s sense of humour, which was again, very Disco. For example, when my cleric realised all his stuff seemed to be missing, I promptly failed a Constitution roll and began to cry. The morgue is incidentally also used as storage for apples, for some reason, and my cleric also debated with himself over whether to try eating all the apples in the room while his various stats encouraged or berated him.

I failed a roll, tried to turn a corpse over, and very nearly died immediately because he was filled with Necrotic energy. I word-vomited at a zombie about my political affiliations, to no response. I got gaslit by the mortician, who told me I should see a professional for my issues and dealt me 1HP of what I can only presume was psychic or emotional damage. I found out his kobold security guard has a side hustle delivering milk. This was all before I even left the first building.

It’s Dungeons & Dragons Disco!

Leaving said building reveals an intimidatingly huge map to explore, especially considering I have no way to judge where anything is or how sprawling the world is. That does mean, though, that there’s a ridiculous amount to engage with in this world, even just within the demo. I spent quite a bit of time running around, picking stuff out of barrels and eavesdropping on random NPCs. It’s great fun.

After over an hour in the demo, I added a goblin named Snell to my party. I assume he’s my Kim Kitsuragi. I wonder if he’s also gay.

Another way that Esoteric Ebb draws from Disco is in its questing tree, which is a version of Disco’s thought cabinet. As you discover and progress in quests, new nodes on the tree will unlock, forming links to each other like one big mind map. I finished one quest right outside the building I woke up in, and discovered that I could choose to have that quest “take root” and give me a feat. What exactly that feat would have been is unclear, as I got an error message when I tried to choose one.

Also, since you’re a cleric, you have a spellbook. This is, obviously, not a Disco mechanic, and I’m very interested in seeing how it comes into play. This more or less functions as if you’re a wizard in D&D – you have to prepare spells at shrines to use them, and you can cast them whenever you see fit. You’ll find spells on scrolls lying around, or even learn them through sheer muscle memory. I’m sure there’s other weird ways you’ll find new spells, it’s a weird game.

But at its core, this is a very political game, much like the one it’s inspired by. The game seems to be about a political conspiracy, and unravelling it will probably require me to maintain good relations with various political parties in the city, or at least to try. These parties are in themselves very interesting: there are revolutionary parties, those that want to maintain the status quo, and more.

I doubt I’ll have much success in balancing this all, though, as my cleric is very stupid – he ran screaming from the goblin queen because she stared at him too hard. Esoteric Ebb is going to be an uphill battle against my own character’s idiocy, and what’s more Disco than that? There isn't a release date yet, but you can try the demo for yourself here.

Esoteric Ebb

WHERE TO PLAY