Esoteric Summer Sale

Over the course of the past month alone we've had a surge of new Clerics taking on the Mystery of the Tea Shop that Blew Up, and I love to see it. Really, I want to personally thank every single person who left a review or just talked about the game in some corner of the internet. Every bit of support helps, and makes it way easier for me and my collaborators to continue making Esoteric stuff.

Speaking of which, I know I've mentioned in the past that we're looking to do all kinds of cool things. Every time someone asks me about the Esoteric 5e Ruleset, it always brings a smile to my cold, jaded, Visken-like face. While I can't confirm nor deny anything at this point - what I can say is this:

Oscar Westberg has been hard at work.

An Esoteric Art Book!

Steam post image Two fan favorites, Moongore and Nessan. The HWBT is one hell of a faction.

An ARTBOOK is on the way. That's an official confirmation. I know Westberg and I talked about putting one of these together way early in the process. If for nothing else than the fact that I wanted to share how amazing it was to work with him. You see, he's such a quick sketcher I just hand him the general idea of what I'm looking for - along with the areas I want him to go wild and do whatever he thinks it's cool - he'll return in no time with a series of suggestions. Pretty regular stuff.

But he always gives me good shit. It's so incredibly difficult to choose. Imagine me, sitting there in my sleep-deprived fugue state after going on a 15k words writing bender, hunched over a half-cracked laptop. Then I get a notification - A through G.

Charisma and Constitution are natural opposites in Ragn's head. Like apples and oranges.

It's such a fun process. But I always like to wonder what the game would be if I picked differently. So much of the characters' personalities was born from their portraits - even for the characters I'd already written prior to the visuals, due to later drafts and edits.

So once we get this artbook out - sometime in the near-ish future - I'll invite you to look over the sketches, the choices, the amazing artwork and ask yourself: would you have chosen something different?

We went through many, many iterations for the ability scores, as you might imagine. Both of us wanted to try out different styles, different tones. Some of them took a few iterations, but you wanna know what's funny? The first Chime-sketch Oscar made was for Constitution. The one you can see above, to the bottom left. He nailed it on the first god-damned try. I wanna say something like, "That's when I knew I had the correct illustrator for Esoteric Ebb" - but really, I was 100% certain from the start. I specifically picked him out after following his work online for years, and he's been amazing to work with ever since.

And we will of course continue working together in the future too. On whatever comes next. Which I can't say too much about. Since it's secret.

You know what else is kind-of-a- secret?

More Esoteric Merch?

We recently announced a Dice collaboration with Die Hard Dice (which you should check out), but beyond that we've been pretty quiet. That's because Jonna has been toiling away at a few different things, which aren't quite ready to be announced yet.

But she has a little teaser for you:

Steam post imageA silhouette. How mysterious.

More will be shown in the coming months. I hope all you Esoteric Evangelists enthusiastically entertain endless exhilarating expectations. Ebb. As production continues (I've heard a few whispers about people wanting console ports and localizations? I'll have to investigate) and the Esoteric Coast keeps expanding, I'm genuinely very (esoterically) excited for the coming years.

Thank you again for all your support. I'm very happy this is my actual job now. Oh, and also:

Buy the Vinyl Now!

I want to give a reminder that the VINYL RELEASE of the Esoteric Ebb Soundtrack Vol. 1 is still available! (At least as this post goes live, on June 25th 2026.) To save yourselves a ton on shipping, please use the right storefront:

If you're in North America, I recommend buying it from Cartridge Thunder here:

https://cartridgethunder.com/products/esoteric-ebb-vol-1-original-soundtrack

For the rest of the world, I recommend buying it from Bandcamp here:

https://andersbachbrianbatzkristianpaulsen.bandcamp.com/album/esoteric-ebb-vol-1-original-soundtrack

Buying the vinyl supports our composers directly, so I highly recommend doing it! Because - holy shit - did they do an amazing job.

Steam post image I can't wait until mine gets delivered. I just gotta buy a vinyl player now.

And then, just to add an extra fun thing on the top of this list of already fun things:

Citizen Sleeper 2 Bundle is LIVE NOW

We've had a bunch of really cool game bundles since launch. Burden Street Station, Solasta II, Sovereign Syndicate, The Séance of Blake Manor - an incredible spread of different genres and styles. And now I'm very happy to announce that we're partnering with Jump Over the Age to bundle with Citizen Sleeper 2! I deeply admire the systemic storytelling that Gareth employs in both Citizen Sleeper 1 and 2, so that's a big recommendation from me. Check it out!

And finally...

Want to know when the ARTBOOK will be available? Or when we end up revealing any future esoteric stuff? Make sure to sign up to our MAILING LIST!

Click here for the Esoteric Mailing list!

(I haven't actually sent out any emails for it yet, since it's only for the big stuff. So you'll probably only get a few emails a year from me via this. Either way, sign up now!)

https://esoteric-era.com/

That's all for now. Puss ô kram! (That's dwarven slang for 'See you later'.)

-Christoffer Bodegård