Across the Obelisk: The Obsidian Uprising (DLC)

Across the Obelisk is a co-op roguelike deckbuilder that rewards obsessive build-crafting across multiple runs, and The Obsidian Uprising slots into that framework as a story-first expansion. The setup sends your party back 30 years to Black Forge, a dwarven city in crisis, which is exactly the kind of premise that should make an RPG fan sit up straight. Prequel storylines live or die on whether the world feels meaningfully different from what you already know, and a dwarven industrial city under siege is fertile ground if the writing does its job. The core loop carries over from the base game: you pick a band of heroes, work through branching card-combat encounters, and make node choices on a map that open or close off paths and story beats. The Obsidian Uprising layers a new narrative arc on top of that, rooted in Black Forge's history and connected to the present-day events of Senenthia. If you have already put hours into the base game's card synergies and multi-hero compositions, the new setting gives those systems a fresh coat of dwarven soot without reinventing them. The question the DLC has to answer is whether the new story nodes and encounter writing add genuine stakes rather than just being a prettily reskinned version of what you have already played. What the expansion does well, based on what Dreamsite Games has communicated, is grounding the action in a specific place with a specific problem. Black Forge is not just a backdrop - it is the reason you are here, and restoring peace to the city before battling back to the present gives the run a cleaner narrative throughline than a standard roguelike loop usually provides. The co-op angle (up to four players online) also means the story moments land differently when you have friends reacting to the same dialogue choices in real time, which has always been one of the base game's quiet strengths. The honest caveat is that this is DLC, not a standalone experience. If you have not already bought into Across the Obelisk and learned its card mechanics, The Obsidian Uprising is not an entry point. And without a significant volume of external reviews to draw from, it is hard to say whether the new story content reaches the density that justifies a dedicated purchase for players who have already exhausted the base game's replayability. Filler encounter nodes dressed up in new art are a real risk in expansions like this, and the 30-year time jump will only feel earned if the writing actually uses that distance to show you something you did not already know about the world. For fans of the base game who want more Across the Obelisk story with a focused setting and a contained arc, this is the obvious next step. Treat it as what it is - an expansion chapter, not a revolution - and your expectations will be calibrated correctly.

Monika · Scout Team

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