The Axis Unseen review: Here be dragons

The Axis Unseen clicked for me when I found the fire arrows. Until then, I’d been wandering around The Axis Unseen’s world, using my meager resources to kill a few monsters before inevitably getting mauled by a Bigfoot or running afoul of a Tree Golem, or, and this was the one that was really getting me, stumbling into an Elder Horned Beast and dying because I just couldn't kill the bloody thing. I didn’t know what it was called at the time. I just knew it was a big, scary deer-thing with a bad attitude and antlers the size of a small tractor-trailer, and it was murdering the ever-loving crap out of me. 

Nothing I did worked. I emptied every arrow I had into it, stabbed it with my knife, and hit it with harsh language. No dice. But I knew where I wanted to go next, and he was in the way. And me? I’m stubborn. But this time was different. We were in the middle of a terrible storm. Torrential rain, lightning crashing down all around us, louder-than-hell thunder, the works. I’d run out of arrows, and decided that the best thing I could do was make for the big tower in the distance and pray I’d find something there to turn the tide. And there, at a small stone carved with runes, I found the fire arrows. And I turned to face the Elder Horned Beast, who was on my trail like a hellhound with a with to take, and said, out loud, “You little [redacted], I'm going to light you on fire.” And luckily, my aim was true. And it stood there and burned as the lightning lit up the sky and the rain tumbled down around us and the ground shook from the thunder. It was beautiful, not just as an incredibly striking image, but in that way moments like that in video games are beautiful because they’re a confluence of circumstances and scenarios and decisions that will probably only ever happen once. I wish I’d been recording it or had the wherewithal to take a screenshot. But all I could do was stare. And that’s when I knew The Axis Unseen was what I like to call A Real Video Game ™.

The end is here, the end is beautiful

The Axis Unseen is the first project from Just Purkey Games, which is mostly just Nate Purkeypile, a 21-year game industry vet who has worked on Metroid Prime 3, Skyrim, and Fallout 3, to name just a few. You wouldn’t know it to look at The Axis Unseen, though, which is both visually stunning and incredibly vast. The setup is a simple one: you’re a hunter in a mysterious world where all the realms meet. Monsters and bizarre creatures are real, and you’re here to kill them so they don’t cross into your realm and learn what happened to the hunters that came before you. Pretty sick, honestly. I wouldn't call The Access Unseen scary, per se, but horror doesn’t have to be scary to be effective.

The Axis Unseen looks like somebody took a heavy metal album cover and made it into a video game. Giant skeletons — human and monster — dot the landscape. Some have fallen over, or are slumped against rocks, trees, cliffs, or each other. Others are locked in eternal prayer. Ruins and shrines hint at those who have come before. Statues, carved out of wood, worship gods you can’t see. The Axis Unseen is a massive game. You’ll start in a forested area, but there are six regions total, including a swamp and a place called the Crimson Abyss, where I plan to build a summer house. Each has its own visual style and nasty beasties to hunt.

You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be monsters

Combat isn’t complex: you start with a bow, a knife, and a spirit arrow you can use to scout the areas around you (and conveniently doubles as a light source), but what makes The Axis Unseen cool is how tense everything is. Your resources are limited when you’re just starting out, and you won't really know the best way to kill a monster until you’ve done it. The first time you fight a Bigfoot is terrifying because you’re probably not going to be equipped for it, and if you pull it off, you won’t have a lot of room for error.

As you go, though, you’ll unlock more stuff — more arrows, arrow types that let you distort time or control wind, magic spells so you can do things like summon pillars of rock, and so on — and upgrade your stats, so combat gets easier. You’ll also have a better idea of how to kill enemies and a better feel for the lay of the land. I won't spoil the process for killing anything here, because figuring it out is half the fun, but you don't just get stronger because you leveled up or got a new spell or in The Axis Unseen. You get stronger because you, yes you, become a better hunter. You’re always prey; even the smallest monsters can take you out if you’re not careful, but over time, you learn the tricks of your bloody trade, and encounters that started off really intimidating become a lot less so. So yeah, my first Bigfoot? Scary as hell. My 40th? I lit him up like the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. He never even got close to me.

There are places man was not meant to tread

But resource management keeps everything tight. You can only carry so many arrows, and while you can retrieve them from the ground and dead beasties by getting close to them, you will lose some eventually because you'll miss shots and you won't remember where they landed. Magic is also limited, as are healing items. If you’re not careful, you can end up having close encounters and I don't mean the kind where the aliens play a nice song for you. But it also makes for thrilling situations. Once, I was heading back to what I’m going to call The In-Between (I don’t recall whether it is ever named in-game), a realm you can access via portal that takes you to a place where you can spend the energy you’ve collected to level up, learn more about the monsters you’ve killed, restock your resources, and use other portals to access different parts of the map. I was out of ammo, and had no magic. That’s when an Obsidian Werewolf found me. I did the only thing I could do: I very bravely, mind you, turned tail and ran in the other direction as fast as I could. I wasn’t near a portal I knew about, but I thought I saw one in the distance, and I was willing to take my chances. I just made it inside before the Werewolf got me. It’s the kind of cool, unscripted moment you only see in a game like this. If you do die, it’s not a big deal. Any Energy you’ve “locked in,” which you do by visiting areas near portals, will carry over, and you can run back to where you died and pick up the rest. Very Souls-y, but it works.

You’ll spend most of your time exploring, and that’s where The Axis Unseen’s UI comes into play. See, everything in The Axis Unseen is conveyed in-world. You can see how much noise you’re making, how much magic you have, and your energy on your bow. Tattoos on your hand will glow when enemies have spotted you. If you’d like to see how many arrows you have, you’ll have to pull out your quiver and check, which also brings up the flag that tells you which way the wind’s blowing. Monsters, after all, can smell you. And you smell delicious. Even running comes with a cost, audibly increasing your heart rate. Get it too high, and you can’t use magic. Run out of breath, and you can’t sprint. You're gonna have to play smart if you wanna make it.

Alone in the dark

Ideally, you’re trying to sneak up on monsters (and avoid getting snuck up on) while you explore, but it’s not always that easy. Engaging one monster might alert others, and running makes a lot of noise, as does traveling over rocks, and there are a lot of rocks. Crouching helps there, but it'll slow you down substantially. Despite the danger traversal invites, though, you’ll want to explore everywhere because there’s always something cool to find, like compelling journal entries detailing the fates or other hunters, or more goodies. And the exploration is always interesting. Once, I saw a couple of giant skeletons collapsed against a huge tower. “Huh,” I said, walking around the base. “I wonder if I can climb those.” And I could. I love it when things that feel like they should work just work, and The Axis Unseen is full of little moments like that.

There’s also a day/night cycle (and when it gets dark, dear reader, it gets dark. Keep those spirit arrows handy), dynamic weather like the thunderstorm I mentioned earlier, some kickass dynamic music that alternates between atmospheric and full-on metal depending on the scenario. Attention to detail is everywhere. I played The Axis Unseen with a controller, and I felt every lightning strike and crash of thunder, every step from huge monsters when they got close, and every hit when I missed a dodge. It’s the little things that make games like this work, and The Axis Unseen nails them. Even The In-Between changes as you find more areas, kill monsters, and find collectibles, adding statues of the monsters you’ve vanquished, tables to house the things you’ve found, and visual representations of each area and its portals once you’ve discovered it for the first time. Once The Axis Unseen gets going, it really gets going, and I can’t wait to go back and find the stuff I’ve missed.

Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see

There are some bugs. Sometimes creatures run into walls or trees and get stuck, arrows careen off rocks and then rocket into space, or you fall through the environment while climbing a rock. One particularly funny bug made my character’s arms and bow cast a shadow, but my body didn’t. In another, my journal detailing the monsters I’d fought showed the Tree Golem picture next to the Sasquatch, which was... weird, and for a second, I didn't know what to make of that. Other times, the pictures don't load at all. Sometimes, monsters just jump up in the air randomly. Just Purkey Games knows about most of this stuff, and has promised to fix most of it by The Axis Unseen’s official launch. None of it bothered me too much — I mostly found it extremely funny, though my arrows shooting themselves into space was annoying during the more intense fights — but it’s worth mentioning. What really bothered me, though, is how The Axis Unseen runs, which is to say: badly. My rig demolishes the system requirements here, but I couldn’t get a steady 30 FPS until I lowered the settings to high. Even on medium, I couldn’t hold a solid 60, even at 1080p. That’s a bummer, especially with a game that looks this good. It's not game-breaking — I still got a relatively stable 40 FPS and could play fine — but it is unfortunate.

I went into The Axis Unseen hoping it would be my jam, and it was. It even made me okay with not having a map (well, after a while), and as someone who has a terrible sense of direction on their best day, that’s no mean feat. I just wanted to explore its world, fight new monsters, and see what I could find. Mostly, though, I think about the stories I got to tell while playing it, like that bit with the Elder Horned Beast I told you about at the beginning here. A little while after I got the fire arrows, I realized I could probably kill a Tree Golem with them, and when I finally ran into one, I finally took it down. It was incredible. And there are so many stories like that in The Axis Unseen. I hope the technical issues get fixed, but even with them, I think Just Purkey Games has made something special. Just... be careful if you venture into this realm between realms? You’re off the edge of the map. Here be dragons. But if you play it right, the scariest thing in this world might just be you.

This review is based on an early digital PC copy supplied by the publisher. The Axis Unseen releases on PC on October 22nd, 2024.

Will Borger

Contributing Editor

Will Borger is a Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction writer and essayist who has been covering games since 2013. His fiction and essays have appeared in YourTango, Veteran Life, Marathon Literary Review, Purple Wall Stories, and Abergavenny Small Press. His games writing has also appeared at IGN, TechRadar, Into the Spine, Lifebar, PCGamesN, The Loadout, and elsewhere. He lives in New York with his wife and dreams of owning a dog. You can find him on X @bywillborger.