Across the Obelisk (for PC) Review (2024)

Across the Obelisk is a chaotic genre mash-up that melds Dominion, Dungeons & Dragons, and Magic the Gathering into a frenetic, satisfying mélange. This deck-building PC game offers rich character variety, but lacks focus, and bogs down the card-acquisition thrills with minutiae. Still, developer Dreamsite Games consistently taps the joy of conquering monsters with iterative math, making it worth your $19.99.

(Credit: Dreamsite Games)

Enter a Fantasy Zone

Leveraging the well-trod array of champion roles, you start with a standard cleric, mage, rogue, and warrior in this deck-building RPG. You can control all four characters or invite up to three other people to split the party responsibility. Regardless, you journey through medieval-inspired villages, ice fields, and flaming pits. The goal is to uncover the mysteries surrounding the long-dormant, eponymous obelisk, and the disappearance of the Kingdom of Senethia’s princess and court magician.

During each campaign run, you undertake quests, meet NPCs, and battle a menagerie of monsters. The story's outset and finale are set, but otherwise you have many narrative options to explore as you play. Parties start in a town, with a few different ways to kit out the team before your trek. From there, each biome gradually builds story and character arcs from the dozens of choices you make along the way. These choices may be as unassuming as selecting a travel route or as bombastic as sending your pre-Industrial automaton to shield the party from a crumbling tower.

In some cases, such as when your group attempts to sneak past pig-men or elemental beings, you must draw a skill card (as opposed to an attack). Outcomes are determined by many factors, such as the characters in your party, equipped items, and the cards you’ve placed in your deck. Collectively, your decisions unlock other cards, characters, and even more potential outcomes when you revisit areas.

(Credit: Dreamsite Games)

Cool Card Battles and Complications

Stitching all this together is Across the Obelisk’s heart: deck-building combat. Most individual map scenarios, which are connected by their many branching paths, have a battle attached to them. Your characters and enemies roll to determine the turn order (helpfully displayed in the center of the interface). Each player draws and plays out their turn, with their abilities nicely feeding into one another’s systems. The team’s rogue screens others’ decks for potential hazards, while the mage invigorates the team tank to make additional attacks. The potential interactions are staggering, and the many pieces move together like intricate choreography when play finds its stride.

Across the Obelisk's many gameplay elements also lead to a key flaw: juggling four decks (one for each character) is a lot to ask of new players going at it alone. In addition, this delicate dance doesn’t quite work in two ways. The first is the heavy focus on customization in the game's earliest stages. Between the altar, armory, and forge, it’s not clear how all these choices impacts play. Successive runs yield selection fatigue, too. Still, there are clear advantages to this system, so it’s hard to discount it completely. For example, you can import cash from prior campaigns to spend in the town, which results in beefy decks.

The second major issue crops up in the latter stages. Status effects on both sides stack, which sometimes makes it feel as though you're tiptoeing through a minefield filled with Bleeding, Burning, Chilling, Poison, and other hazards. You can lose half of your HP at the top of a turn, and another half at the bottom (not to mention dealing with debuff effects). It can bring play to a crawl, and diverts your efforts to countering massive bursts of complex, stacking status effects. You can plan around this in the early game, but the effects are consistent enough that it still feels like a limiting factor in deck-building freedom.

(Credit: Dreamsite Games)

Can Your PC Run Across the Obelisk?

Across the Obelisk isn't a demanding game; it will easily run on just about any PC released in the past decade. According to the game's Steam page, your PC needs at least a single-core, 2GHz CPU; 2GB of RAM; 1GB available video memory (though integrated laptop GPUs are just fine); 1GB of storage; and the Windows XP operating system (it's also available for macOS and SteamOS). Our testbed—a gaming PC with an Intel 5820K CPU, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPU, and 32GB of DDR4 RAM—had no trouble moving the game at 120 frames per second (at 1440p resolution).

The scant system requirements bely a sharp-looking adventure, though.Vibrant, surrealist art brings Senethia’s monsters and locales to life. There are countless monsters, each with smooth idle, attack, or spell animations to keep the screen lively as you mull your card decisions. Many creatures are refreshing interpretations of fantastical beasts. Whether you’re squaring against an eerie, possessed sheep or a dryad with a log-hammer for a hand, the designs are crisp. The best art, and indeed the most interesting creatures throughout the game, end up in your party as valuable additions.

Hit the Deck

Across the Obelisk falls just shy of the modern deck-building genre’s defining hits, but holds its own in an increasingly crowded field. It can struggle to keep pace with itself at times, but you should check it out if Dungeons & Dragons meets Slay the Spire sounds at all appealing. Coming to understand and master the gameplay is great fun, particularly as you tweak your creations and internalize the game’s nuances. Just be prepared to deal with its many systems and status effects.

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