N-iX Games and Paradox Interactive have been working together for years now, across some of the studio’s biggest strategy titles: Stellaris, Crusader Kings III, Imperator: Rome, Europa Universalis IV, Europa Universalis V, Hearts of Iron IV, and Victoria 3. Most of that history is art production on large-scale historical strategy games.
Across the Obelisk: The Shattered Remnant is a different kind of Paradox project for us. It’s a deckbuilding roguelite rather than a grand strategy game, and this time our work centered on art.
Across the Obelisk is a party-based deckbuilder where players recruit heroes, build a deck around them, and push through a run that punishes bad synergy fast. The Shattered Remnant adds a new Act 4 path called the Withered Vale: a memory-warped region where the environment itself reacts to how a player fights.
The expansion’s core hook is an adaptive enemy system. Enemies read the player’s deck mid-run and start resisting whatever damage type or curse strategy is winning, so a build that carried someone through Act 3 can’t just coast on autopilot into Act 4. Around that system, the DLC adds a new playable hero, Althea, a spellcaster built around discard-pile manipulation and chained Echo Spell effects, plus a new companion, Ashy, a spirit cat that casts Mind Shard cards.
The narrative layer runs through three named events: the Necropolis of Knowledge, the Tomb of the First Hero, and the Mirror of Regret, each built around a choice with a real reward attached. The path closes with a boss fight against the Withered Soul, an enemy built to mirror the player’s own heroes back at them.
N-iX Games ran the DLC with a compact team of game designers, UI artists, 2D artists, an art lead, a producer, and a Unity developer. The full concept and card art came out of that team.
Most animation on the DLC was built in Spine, layered on top of the Photoshop art. The art creation, concept through final art, was delivered under tight timelines to fit inside a compressed production window.
Across the Obelisk already had a defined look, built up over years of content. N-iX Games matched that style rather than reinventing it.
The harder constraint was originality. Years of content meant every generic fantasy setting was already spoken for, so instead of another elf forest or necromancer’s graveyard, the Withered Vale became a warped reality of shattered mirrors and shapeshifting enemies.
Across the Obelisk: The Shattered Remnant was released on Steam on June 17, 2026, as a DLC for the base game. It’s live now, with our art, and the team is gathering player feedback on the new path, the adaptive enemy system, and Althea’s kit.
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