The Axis Unseen

The Axis Unseen is an open-world action adventure game with horror elements. It was developed by an independent studio Just Purkey Games founded by Nate Purkeypile, who used to work on games such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Fallout series (starting from its third installment) and Starfield.

Plot

The Axis Unseen is set in a fantasy land inhabited by creatures from ancient folklore. The player character hunts them in order to stop them from crossing into our world. We must, therefore, constantly be on guard, as it's easy to turn from predator into prey.

There were other hunters before us, who left behind numerous records and drawings. By studying them, we can learn more about the game's world, the monsters and our predecessors.

Mechanics

The gameplay of The Axis Unseen is shown from the first-person perspective (FPP). The game takes place in a vast, open, freely traversible world. When tracking down our prey we must pay attention to the wind direction, to prevent them from sniffing us out prematurely. Once we get close enough, we can draw our bow and start hunting.

We start off equipped only with simple arrows, needing to follow the monsters' tracks to find them. Killing the targets grants us their powers, which let us improve our senses; this means we can start seeing smells or sense heat traces, making subsequent hunts much easier. By progressing through the game we can also upgrade our bow and acquire new types of arrows (such as fire arrows, arrows controlling the wind or time freezing arrows) which make us a more effective hunter. We must also remember different kinds of arrows can interact with each other (for example, wind arrows cause fire to spread more quickly), which can be used to our advantage.

Technical aspects

The visuals of The Axis Unseen are nothing to sneeze at. The beautiful open areas and the monsters' designs are especially appealing. The game's atmospheric soundtrack, which combines rock, metal and primitive instruments, was composed by Clifford Meyer of the Red Sparowes band.