Esoteric Ebb is a massive game. It's a short D&D campaign rolled into a video game, with all the potential avenues a player could go down, complete with a huge cast of unique and interesting NPCs. Its script comes in at around 600,000 words, and while creator Christoffer Bodegård is clearly proud of all of the game (especially now thanks to its success), there were parts of making the game that were tricky or frustrating for him.
Speaking with us in a recent interview following the game's launch and success, Bodegård explained the parts of Esoteric Ebb that challenged him technically and emotionally. Regarding the latter, the internal politics proved particularly difficult to wrap up.
"I saved them until the end - three months before the game was released. Because I knew that a great deal of the protagonist's political development would be based on precisely these, and I also knew that they would be severely limited by my own political and philosophical knowledge," Bodegård explained. "I drank loads of tea and sat down in early December 2025 and wrote them all, one by one. And it was here that I really had to examine exactly what my own biased thoughts, fundamental ideological pillars, and feelings were regarding topics such as democracy, men and women, migration, and loneliness."
The process of putting it all out there was a scary one, particularly as Bodegård had no real way to gauge how people were going to react to the game's heavily politicised content and themes. If there was an element that frustrated more than it scared Bodegård, though, it was the encounters.
"That was the only part of the game where I actually enlisted the help of my editor, Phil Jamesson, who had to write drafts for four of the later battles, based on my design," Bodegård said. "There's just so much unique content that needs to be written for these - imagine, they can be played in so many different orders. There are so many different choices - every round must have unique attacks and actions. And every subsequent round is influenced (and often entirely based on) the choice you made previously. And for there to be tactics and strategy and AGENCY in these, everything has to be properly designed as well. I'm very proud of the final boss fight, though. It's really cool."
Even if some parts proved scary, and others frustrating to make, the end result of Esoteric Ebb is certainly an impressive whole, and one that would not be the same without the political strife, or wacky encounters.
