It was free to play this weekend on Steam (and is 30% off until April 6), so I thought I'd give it a spin. TLDR: it's a fun deck builder in the vein of Slay the Spire. However, I don't think I'll be picking it up just yet. Mainly because of my existing backlog and this game didn't quite give me the "omg have to play right now" feeling. If you are looking for a game though, I recommend it.

Overview

Like Slay the Spire, in this game you unlock/upgrade cards and build your deck as you progress through randomized acts. Along the way, you'll race events where you can play it safe or roll for more loot, face monsters, and ultimately face major bosses in each act.

Unlike Slay the Spire, there is meta progression in this title making it a RouteLite instead of a RougeLike. As you play, your characters level up allowing you to spend points on perks. These persist between runs.

In addition, you can upgrade your town to make it easier to forge cards, buy better items, etc.

The town itself is a place you visit at the start of each act. It also lets you collect your gold/crystals from previous runs to spend to make this run easier. You can even save up 3 runs worth of these currencies and then blow them all on one super-powerful run.

Death

This was my first death (to the Act1 boss). You get a nice overview of the perk points gained + currency available next run. The further you get, the more of each.

Unlocking Characters

I didn't quite get far enough this weekend to unlock characters, but each slot has 3 heroes to unlock. Reading up on the game a bit, these allow for wildly different team comps and strategies and provides a lot of depth to the game and replayability.

Map

Where you plan out your route starting from the town (left) and ending at the boss (right) for each act. Pretty standard for this genre with multiple paths offering differing levels of challenge/reward. I like the map aesthetic, but I'm sure that varies by person.

Combat

This is where you'll spend 90% of your time in game. Although I understand that battles get much faster as you get better at the game, optimize builds, etc. At the start, though, battles can drag out a bit.

Anyway, the green arrow on my ranger fellow in green means he goes first, which is usual given his faster speed. You can see the order of turns up top and the cards the current character can plan on the bottom. I found it most efficient to have one dedicated healer, one tank, and 2 dps characters (ranger and mage). I was able to beat the Act1 boss on the second play through mainly by focusing on fire and ignoring his minions. Just kept pressure on his face.

Conclusion

It's a really solid game, and for fans of the genre, I think it's worth your time. I've played a ton of hours in Slay the Spire and only a weekendend in this game. As such, it's hard for me to say which game is better. They are definitely different, with Obelisk leaning into the RouteLite and meta progression. I definitely appreciate that.

The only knock I can really give this game in the time I played it was the perk allocation system. Instead of just having a pool of perks points to assign, each character has to be assigned to the (shared) tree individually. This makes it 10x harder than it needs to be to fill out or change the perk points. I wonder if there are mods out that fix this.

As I said at the open, if you are looking for a new game and like this genre, I can heartily endorse this title. It's a fun game and you can sink hours into it. For me, I've put it on my wishlist. I've got a backlog of games to play before D4 comes out in June, so unless this goes 50% off or more, I'll likely not pick it up for some time.