The strategy guide includes numerous small essays, providing background on such subjects as nanotechnology, Jungian psychology, and the nature of artificial intelligence.

The satellite is designed to release nanobots into Earth's atmosphere in order to counteract depletion of the ozone layer and air pollution.

In order to communicate with Lilah and her partner, the nanobots constructed a female android known as "The Conductor", with a white porcelain, human head with silver eyes and a bizarre electrical halo cap on top.

During the complexity, Ceres, for unknown reasons, thought of her two creators as mother and father, begging for approval, yet able to change the world completely on her own.

The first area, exploring the character of Lilah's subconscious, deals with the themes of bureaucracy involved in getting the Ceres project funded and realized.

While the Conductor is busy, Lilah finds Max trapped in an electronic prison - the PMA, and frees him, enabling him to sabotage Ceres' control chip.

The two major exceptions to this are Bismuth, a cobbled-together, elf-like robot with a lamp for a head which is capable of shining its light beam great distances, and the Conductor.

At the beginning of the game, before reaching the obsidian, the player can watch a couple of videos of other scientists that Max and Lilah work with, including their boss.

The motivating phrase in the advertisements was "Your rules do not apply here," (accompanied by e.g. a picture of a lamp emitting darkness) which suited the storyline and atmosphere of the game.

[5][6] The title was re-released by Call Your Vegetables and Jordan Freeman Group on August 28, 2023, alongside fellow SegaSoft game, Rocket Jockey.

[9][10] According to PC Data, its sales in the United States reached nearly 14,000 copies by the end of February 1997, a figure that CNET Gamecenter's Erica Smith called "grim".

[12] While SegaSoft had signed the developer in 1996 to publish Obsidian, The Space Bar and other games, the company separated with Rocket Science in early April 1997.

[13] Alderman noted that, thanks to the failure of Rocket Science's latest releases, SegaSoft and other publishers had "balked at putting up the money needed to fund new projects."

[18] GameSpot's Tim Soete similarly remarked that Obsidian "presents a pleasant departure from the lonely inertia of Myst's gameplay.

[15] Next Generation gave Obsidian one of its few negative reviews, commenting that "The transitions from one section to the next, a mix of prerendered graphics and FMV, are handled with some style - the nanotechnology subplot lends itself to at least one conceptually interesting sequence - but they hardly add anything to gameplay or help out the deadly slow pace."

The reviewer also considered the story extremely predictable and the puzzles absurdly difficult, likening them to "something you'd find in a book at the checkout lane in the grocery store".

The editors wrote of Obsidian, "[W]ith a great story, clever puzzles, psychedelic graphics, and an irreverent sense of humor, this futuristic paranoid fantasy is an unexpected delight.