Across the Obelisk has carved out a unique space in the deck-building roguelike genre, blending cooperative multiplayer mechanics with strategic card battles. Developed by Dreamsite Games, this indie gem combines elements from beloved titles like Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon while adding its own cooperative twist. But is Across the Obelisk actually worth your time and money?
This comprehensive guide will help you understand everything about this cooperative deck-building RPG—from its diverse character roster to its innovative features. Whether you’re a roguelike veteran or completely new to the genre, you’ll discover exactly what this game offers and whether it matches your gaming preferences. We’ll explore the game’s mechanics, character classes, unique features, and answer the most common questions players have before diving in.
Is Across the Obelisk Good? An Honest Assessment
The short answer is yes—Across the Obelisk delivers an exceptional experience for deck-building enthusiasts and cooperative gamers alike. The game currently holds an “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating on Steam with over 90% positive reviews, which speaks volumes about its quality and player satisfaction.
What Makes This Game Exceptional
Across the Obelisk excels in several critical areas that define a quality gaming experience. The deck-building system offers incredible depth without becoming overwhelming, allowing both newcomers and veterans to find their strategic footing. Each run feels meaningfully different due to the variety of cards, items, and character combinations available.
The cooperative multiplayer component transforms what could be a solitary experience into a social activity where teamwork genuinely matters. Unlike many cooperative games where players simply exist in the same space, Across the Obelisk requires actual coordination, strategy discussion, and complementary character builds. Players can join forces with up to three friends (four players total) to tackle challenging encounters.
The game’s progression system strikes an excellent balance between permanent upgrades and run-specific choices. You’ll unlock new cards, characters, and items through gameplay, ensuring each session contributes to your long-term growth even when a run ends unsuccessfully. This persistent progression helps maintain motivation and reduces the frustration often associated with roguelike difficulty.
Potential Drawbacks to Consider
While Across the Obelisk is excellent, it’s not perfect for everyone. The game has a learning curve that requires investment—understanding synergies between cards, character abilities, and enemy mechanics takes time. New players might feel overwhelmed during their first few runs.
The visual presentation, while charming with its hand-drawn aesthetic, won’t appeal to those seeking AAA graphics quality. Some players find the art style too simplistic compared to higher-budget titles. Additionally, the game’s difficulty can be punishing, especially on higher challenge levels, which might frustrate players looking for a more casual experience.
Complete Character Guide: Who Can You Play As?
Across the Obelisk features sixteen unique characters across four distinct classes, each bringing different playstyles and strategic options to your adventures. Understanding these characters is crucial for building effective team compositions.
Warriors: The Frontline Defenders
Warriors serve as your primary tanks and damage dealers, absorbing punishment while dishing out physical attacks. These characters excel at controlling the battlefield and protecting squishier teammates.
Andrin specializes in sustained damage output with abilities that grow stronger as combat continues. He’s excellent for beginners due to his straightforward playstyle focused on attacking and self-healing. His card pool emphasizes consistent damage rather than burst potential.
Thuls focuses on defensive capabilities and crowd control, making him ideal for protecting the team. His abilities include shield generation and taunt mechanics that force enemies to target him. Players who enjoy traditional tank roles will appreciate Thuls’ protective capabilities.
Magnus offers a berserker-style approach with high-risk, high-reward mechanics. His abilities deal increased damage when at lower health, creating exciting risk-management gameplay. Magnus rewards aggressive players who can balance between danger and opportunity.
Cornelius brings utility and support to the warrior class through buff distribution and team enhancement. He’s less about personal glory and more about elevating everyone’s performance, making him valuable in coordinated team compositions.
Mages: Masters of Elemental Power
Mages dominate through elemental damage, area-of-effect abilities, and status effect application. They typically have lower health pools but devastating offensive capabilities.
Evelyn serves as the archetypal fire mage with powerful direct damage spells. Her cards focus on burning enemies and exploiting elemental weaknesses. Evelyn’s straightforward offensive approach makes her accessible while remaining effective at all skill levels.
Wilbur manipulates ice and cold mechanics, emphasizing control through slowing and freezing enemies. His playstyle rewards patience and strategic timing, as frozen enemies become vulnerable to additional damage from teammates.
Healers: Keeping Your Team Alive
Support characters in Across the Obelisk don’t just heal—they provide buffs, cleanse debuffs, and offer utility that enables aggressive strategies.
Heiner represents the traditional healing archetype with abilities focused on health restoration and status cleansing. Every team benefits from his presence, especially during longer encounters where sustained healing determines success or failure.
Reginald takes a more proactive support approach, combining healing with offensive buffs and enemy debuffs. He enables damage-focused teammates to reach their full potential while maintaining survivability.
Scouts: Speed, Precision, and Subterfuge
Scout characters emphasize speed manipulation, critical hits, and tactical positioning. They often determine combat pacing through their ability to control turn order.
Bree excels at single-target elimination with abilities that guarantee critical strikes. She’s perfect for players who enjoy precision gameplay and calculated assassinations of priority targets.
Ottis focuses on poison damage and damage-over-time effects, creating a different strategic approach. Rather than immediate impact, Ottis sets up devastating damage that accumulates over multiple turns.
Core Features That Define the Experience
Cooperative Multiplayer That Actually Matters
The cooperative element isn’t just a gimmick—it fundamentally changes how you approach challenges. Team composition matters significantly, as certain character combinations create powerful synergies. Communication becomes essential when deciding which cards to play, which enemies to prioritize, and how to distribute limited resources.
Players share the same currency pool for purchases, requiring group consensus on upgrades and items. This shared economy creates meaningful decisions where team priorities must align. The game supports both online multiplayer with friends and solo play where you control all characters.
Dynamic Deck-Building System
Every character starts with a basic deck that you’ll enhance throughout your journey. The card acquisition system offers multiple paths:
👉 Purchase powerful cards from merchants using gold earned in combat
👉 Receive random card rewards after successful battles
Cards feature multiple rarities—common, uncommon, rare, and epic—with higher rarities offering more powerful or unique effects. The key to success lies in creating focused decks with strong synergies rather than simply collecting every powerful card you encounter.
Roguelike Progression with Persistent Unlocks
Each run through Across the Obelisk presents a unique procedurally generated journey with different encounters, enemies, and rewards. When your team falls, you’ll return to the starting hub with experience points that unlock permanent improvements.
The progression system includes unlocking new characters, cards for existing characters, items that can appear during runs, and various gameplay modifiers called challenges. This ensures continuous advancement even through unsuccessful attempts.
Challenge Mode and Replayability
Once you’ve conquered the base difficulty, Across the Obelisk offers challenge modifiers that dramatically increase difficulty while providing greater rewards. These challenges range from enemy buffs to resource restrictions, allowing experienced players to continuously test their skills and strategy.
The weekly challenge system provides curated scenarios with specific character rosters and modifiers, creating a competitive element where players can compare performance on leaderboards.
Strategic Depth: Why Veterans Keep Playing
Across the Obelisk reveals its true complexity once you understand the fundamentals. The interaction between character perks, card synergies, and item effects creates nearly infinite strategic possibilities.
Synergy-Focused Deck Construction
The most successful strategies revolve around identifying powerful card synergies and building your deck to exploit them consistently. For example, combining cards that apply vulnerability with high-damage abilities creates multiplicative damage scaling. Similarly, pairing damage-over-time effects with abilities that trigger when enemies have certain debuffs maximizes efficiency.
Resource management extends beyond just health and energy. Card draw, deck cycling speed, and curse management all require attention. Some strategies deliberately thin decks to minimum size for consistency, while others embrace larger decks with powerful card-drawing engines.
Enemy Variety and Adaptation
The game features dozens of unique enemy types, each requiring different strategic approaches. Some enemies heavily punish direct damage, rewarding damage-over-time strategies. Others cleanse debuffs regularly, making buff-focused approaches more valuable. Learning enemy patterns and adapting your strategy mid-run separates competent players from masters.
Boss encounters particularly emphasize strategic preparation. Each boss has unique mechanics that can devastate unprepared teams. Successful players scout ahead, adjust their deck composition, and ensure they have answers to specific boss abilities before engaging.
Comparison with Similar Games
Understanding how Across the Obelisk compares to genre leaders helps set appropriate expectations.
Slay the Spire Comparison
While Slay the Spire pioneered many mechanics that Across the Obelisk uses, the cooperative element creates a fundamentally different experience. Slay the Spire offers tighter, more refined solo gameplay with deeper individual character complexity. Across the Obelisk trades some of that individual depth for team-based strategy and social interaction.
The combat complexity differs significantly. Slay the Spire features more intricate enemy patterns and relic interactions, while Across the Obelisk emphasizes team coordination and complementary character builds.
Monster Train and Griftlands
Compared to Monster Train’s tower defense approach or Griftlands’ negotiation mechanics, Across the Obelisk stays closer to traditional deck-building combat. It’s less mechanically innovative than these titles but more accessible and socially engaging through its cooperative focus.
Tips for New Players
Starting your Across the Obelisk journey successfully requires understanding several key concepts:
Begin with simpler characters like Andrin or Evelyn that have straightforward playstyles. These characters help you learn core mechanics without overwhelming complexity. As you gain confidence, experiment with more nuanced options like support characters or combo-dependent builds.
Focus on deck synergy rather than simply collecting powerful cards. A focused deck of twenty cards with strong interactions outperforms a bloated deck of thirty cards with individually powerful but disconnected effects. Remove weak starting cards when opportunities arise to maintain consistency.
Don’t underestimate defensive options. New players often focus entirely on damage output, leading to premature defeats. Cards that generate block, heal damage, or remove debuffs become increasingly valuable as encounters grow more challenging.
Is Across the Obelisk Worth Your Money in 2024?
Considering its price point, content depth, and active development, Across the Obelisk represents excellent value for deck-building enthusiasts. The game regularly receives content updates with new characters, cards, and features, ensuring the experience remains fresh for long-term players.
The multiplayer component adds significant value if you have friends interested in cooperative strategy games. The ability to share a single copy through Steam’s Remote Play Together feature for testing purposes (though each player should purchase for full features) lowers the barrier to group play.
For solo players, the game still offers substantial content, though you’ll miss the social dynamics that elevate the experience. The ability to control multiple characters simultaneously provides complexity, but some players find managing four characters overwhelming.
Conclusion: A Deck-Building Experience Worth Taking
Across the Obelisk successfully combines cooperative gameplay with strategic deck-building mechanics, creating a unique experience in a crowded genre. Its character diversity, deep strategic systems, and meaningful cooperative elements make it standout choice for players seeking engaging tactical gameplay.
The game is particularly recommended for players who enjoy cooperative experiences, appreciate strategic depth over mechanical complexity, and don’t mind the indie aesthetic. While it has a learning curve and won’t appeal to those seeking casual gameplay, the investment pays dividends in hundreds of hours of engaging content.
Whether you’re a roguelike veteran looking for a fresh cooperative experience or a newcomer to deck-building games seeking an accessible entry point with friends, Across the Obelisk delivers quality entertainment that justifies its price tag.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you play Across the Obelisk solo?
Yes, Across the Obelisk supports solo play where you control all four characters simultaneously. While designed with cooperative play in mind, the solo experience remains engaging and strategic. Many players actually prefer solo play for the complete control it offers over team composition and decision-making.
How long does a typical run take?
A complete run through Across the Obelisk typically takes between 2-4 hours depending on your playstyle, team composition, and decision speed. The game supports saving mid-run, allowing you to break longer sessions into manageable chunks without losing progress.
Is there cross-platform multiplayer support?
Currently, Across the Obelisk supports multiplayer exclusively on Steam. Cross-platform play with console versions is not available. The game uses Steam’s networking infrastructure for cooperative sessions, requiring all players to own the game on Steam.
What’s the difference between challenge modes?
Challenge modes add specific modifiers that increase difficulty while providing greater rewards. These include enemy buffs, resource restrictions, and special conditions. You can enable multiple challenges simultaneously for exponentially increased difficulty and rewards. Challenges must be unlocked through progression before activation.
How often does the game receive updates?
The developers maintain an active update schedule with new content patches arriving every few months. These updates typically include new characters, cards, items, balance adjustments, and quality-of-life improvements. The development team actively engages with the community through Steam forums and Discord, incorporating player feedback into updates.
