The Axis Unseen

The writing and presentation was so bad that I was initially quite endeared to the game, assuming a teenager had made it. After looking up the creator, I came to the conclusion that he's really old enough to know better.

The Axis Unseen is a bold and distinctive open-world action game that leans heavily into atmosphere, immersion, and player intuition rather than conventional hand-holding or familiar genre structures. Developed and published by Just Purkey Games, the project is the work of a solo developer with deep industry experience, and that pedigree shows in both its ambition and its willingness to take risks. Rather than presenting a traditional power fantasy, the game casts you as a lone hunter in a hostile, myth-infused wilderness where survival depends on awareness, patience, and a deep understanding of the creatures you pursue. The setting is a fractured world where ancient beings drawn from global folklore have crossed into reality, leaving destruction in their wake. Your home and fellow hunters have been wiped out, and what remains is a vast, untamed landscape filled with ruins, forgotten lore, and roaming monstrosities. The story is delivered subtly through environmental details, written fragments, and visual cues rather than direct exposition. This restrained narrative approach reinforces the feeling of isolation and discovery, encouraging players to piece together the history of the world at their own pace rather than being led by scripted events. Exploration is central to the experience, and The Axis Unseen places heavy emphasis on immersion by stripping away many modern interface conventions. There is no traditional minimap or intrusive HUD. Instead, information is conveyed through diegetic elements such as markings on your body, visual effects tied to abilities, and environmental feedback. Navigation relies on landmarks, memory, and occasional supernatural guidance rather than clear objective markers. This design choice deepens immersion and makes the world feel dangerous and unknown, though it can also be disorienting for players accustomed to clearer guidance. Combat is deliberate and often unforgiving, blending stealth, hunting mechanics, and bursts of intense action. Your primary tools include a bow, elemental arrows, and supernatural abilities that enhance your senses or manipulate the environment. Enemies are not simple targets; many creatures track you using sight, sound, scent, or even mystical perception. This forces careful planning before engagements, as reckless movement or noise can quickly lead to deadly consequences. Early encounters can feel brutal, but as you learn enemy behaviors and master positioning, combat becomes more strategic and rewarding. Progression in The Axis Unseen is tied closely to exploration and experimentation rather than traditional leveling systems. As you explore deeper into the world and defeat powerful foes, you unlock new abilities and enhancements that expand how you interact with the environment. These upgrades often feel like natural extensions of survival instincts rather than arbitrary stat boosts, reinforcing the theme of becoming a more capable hunter through experience. However, the learning curve is steep, and the game expects players to experiment and fail before systems fully click into place. Visually, the game favors mood over spectacle. Its environments are expansive and often stark, with lighting, weather, and terrain combining to create a sense of constant unease. Creature designs are one of its strongest elements, drawing from diverse mythological sources to create enemies that feel unfamiliar and unsettling. The art direction emphasizes scale and menace, making encounters feel significant even when they occur far from any narrative milestone. Sound design plays a crucial role in shaping the experience. The dynamic soundtrack blends heavy metal with ambient and tribal elements, shifting in intensity depending on exploration or combat. Rather than acting as background noise, the music actively reinforces tension and momentum, making battles feel primal and dangerous while exploration carries a haunting, meditative quality. Environmental sounds further heighten awareness, as distant roars, rustling foliage, or sudden silence often signal unseen threats nearby. Despite its strengths, The Axis Unseen is not without rough edges. Technical issues such as performance drops, occasional bugs, and inconsistent physics interactions can disrupt immersion. The minimalist interface and lack of clear direction, while intentional, may frustrate players who prefer structured progression or clearer objectives. Reading lore fragments during exploration can also feel risky in a world where danger is always present, occasionally breaking pacing or flow. Overall, The Axis Unseen is a demanding but deeply atmospheric experience that rewards patience, curiosity, and a willingness to engage with its systems on their own terms. It is not designed to appeal to everyone, nor does it try to smooth over its complexity or roughness. For players drawn to slow-burn exploration, hunting mechanics, mythological horror, and immersive world design, it offers something rare and memorable. Its ambition and distinctive identity make it stand out in the open-world genre, delivering an experience that feels raw, intense, and uniquely personal despite its imperfections. Rating: 7/10

Words Warning: I wind up writing an enormous ramble about this game. It has inserted itself into my personal pantheon of greats, so when I clicked the "reccommend" button, I broke my mouse I hit the button so hard. It's a bit rough in places and it's not the prettiest to look at. It's also a very slooooooow-paced game, because it's really centered around stealth in big, open spaces with relatively little cover. Performance in a few places isn't ideal, and the game does not really hold your hand either. You're really, really on your own, with literally not even a map to guide you. Are you up for a challenge? Ramble begins! You're in a strange, desperately otherworldly place. It's alien and weird, the lighting is really bizarre, it provokes a sense of wonder when I look around. What's with all these giant bones? Weird landscapes? Statues to a deer god or whatever? Seriously, what is up with this place? The game has answers, but doesn't give them to you. You have to go find them. But as you do, you can experience the extremely moody atmosphere. It's often quiet, just the sound of your own footfalls, the wind, some wildlife, which means when you hear something else's footfalls it's time to pay attention. That thing is likely quite interested in having you for a late lunch. The game does a lot with audio. When a monster has caught scent of you, you can hear it snuffling as it tracks. You can hear them shuffling across loose rocks, or making cries, and it encourages you to be quiet, to listen closely, get whatever audio cues you can to make the most of it. It's not just you being hunted. You're also a hunter. You've got a knife, a shortbow, a very small number of arrows. You can defend yourself, most of the time. You just can't afford to miss. That's easier said than done. Arrows are much slower than bullets. There's visible gravity. Hitting even a walking target is a challenge, let alone hitting it well. Hitting some werewolf in the face at 200m? That's trivial in most games, and a legendary shot in this one. Did I write werewolf? Yeah. The monsters in this game, they're all supernatural. This is, apparently, the dimension from which all supernatural creatures come. Some, as you can imagine, are much gnarlier to fight than others, and won't go down with one or two arrows. Which does mean you'll get something really nasty and ill-tempered, now bleeding and furious, barrelling down on you and looking to have words with you about your manners. When the electric guitar soundtrack kicks in, you know you're in trouble. Well, it's not all bad. If you explore, you'll find little shrines to give you more arrows, and you can spend accumulated XP to improve your skills, and you'll find equipment upgrades and powers as you go along. They still have the advantage, but the odds tip a bit more in your favour. And stealth is still the biggest weapon in your arsenal. Way more effort was put into this than your usual game. Monsters can see you, of course, so careful use of cover, keeping a low profile, avoiding walking where they're looking are helpful. Or illuminating yourself with mundane light. Monsters can hear you, so walking in softer earth, not sprinting, or barging into things or otherwise making noise. Monsters can smell you, so you need to be mindful of which way the wind is blowing. Is that upwind or downwind? Either way, try to avoid getting the wind to waft your stank to the monsters. They can also track you. You leave footprints as you go, especially in soft earth. Walk across scree or hard surfaces, and you'll be harder to track. But you'll be noisier. So there's variables you need to be mindful of as you go. And, over time, you start to develop your own senses. It lets you smell and "feel" what the monsters are up to as well, though for obvious reasons this is difficult to render in a video game. So you can see the stank particles coming off monsters, depending on wind direction. You get a tattoo that glows when a monster is trompling about nearby enough, instead of just feeling their heavy footfalls through your feet. Now, most of these powers only work if you stay calm and composed, keep your character's heartrate down. And how do you do that? Skulking, of course! It reinforces your need for stealth. Flailing about makes you half-blind and all the boys in the yard get very interested in your milkshake. I mean things going loud isn't just you fighting the one thing, but also everything else within earshot. The monsters really don't like you! This is really about the immersion. There's no HUD. Tattoos on your hand suggest things that are senses: direction, how hurt you are, vibrations in the ground. Runes on your bow suggest other things. Most of them are not super-urgent, like how noisy you are (useful if you, the player, are hearing-impaired) or how much souljuice you've picked up along the way. I can't really intuitively grasp their numerical runic system so, right, not that useful. Also it sometimes gets blown out with bloom when it's really misty out, but other than knowing what spell you have active (and they all have colours) it's no big deal. Let me try to reign this in and give you some summary here: This is a stealth game about hunting supernatural monsters. Your weaponry is difficult to use well and really limited, so sneaking up close makes the shots easier to make. And this can be vital as some critters have limited areas to hurt. Monsters will also hunt you, so picking and choosing your battles is critical. Being aware of your surroundings, being willing to explore, and being willing to take your time and just pay attention are all key to success. The setting is otherworldly, a weird place full of mysteries that are answered only with exploration. I find it extremely tense, because I love a horror game that lets me fight the horrors, even at great odds. This game is exactly that. It gets me hyper-focussed and even a minor win, like landing a headshot at 150 meters, feels like an accomplishment. I'm still streaming this as I go along, and in a zesty first, I've also been uploading them to your tubes. My schedule is posted in my profile, and if you found yourself down here and still reading, I'd actually love it if you showed up some time. I'm a non-screaming, responsible adult, and you are my kind of person. http://www.twitch.tv/fdejeuner And if you want a creepy-ass horror game that doesn't make you a completely helpless victim, this is kind of how I imagine it might go. Just you, a bow, and really long odds. But you have two things they don't: wits and guile.

There's too little to do. Clearly this is a passion project and it's a shame this dev couldn't get more people on board to really put something together. The enemy animations are highly limited and clunky, and the terrain's collision is not mapped well, or thoroughly, so the enemies not only get stuck all the time on assets but also grid lock, having to go around imaginary objects as they pathfind around terrain issues you can't see. Add to this that most the main enemies, the in the first few hours at least, are all enemies that run head first at you, eventually, with weaknesses on their head, and headshots insta-killing them. This means you can just wait for the enemies to get close and barely aim and one shot most of the enemies the whole time. The audio engineering is some of the worst I've heard in a game. Maybe this is to offset the combat situation. These two combined make the entire process of hunting seem foolish. You can easily run around and make all the noise you want and one shot all the werewolves and then use you higher level stuff on larger enemies. If you want a challenge you can use your knife, which will still insta-kill them if you headshot them. It's incredibly easy. Exploration is awful due to the topography issues. The game tries to have a much more complex terrain than its programmed for underneath the hood. I used a controller because aiming on kbm was too easy. The controller is not well considered for aiming. It's a mess. The world is cool, but the way it's laid out you can't really appreciate. There are Elden Ring like telescopes where you can get bird's eye views but the world is generally much too large with too little in it. You generally feel like you're slowly walking (because the game suggests you should, not because you need to) to get to the next location in an otherwise desolate world. Each location is generally an oversized skeleton and an altar or portal back to your central...uhh...whatever it is. That's about it. Physical level design is key to any game. I genuinely hate to say this but I think this game lacks level design in its entirety. This game is a really good premise and the artistic style is there, though it was made in an age that didn't really let them expose it. It's not bad, by any means, especially for a single dev, but it's not a good game by equal measure.

I'm still early into my playthrough of the game, but for what I have seen this is a very interesting game. he's got a story to tell, and you can tell this was the guy who secretly made stealth archer the best class in Skyrim. I'm not going to say this is a masterpiece. Other people have made clear the issues with this game, but believe it or not, its a kinda cool experience. I think the tutorial does a good job at the start but falls off and fails to explain the leveling system to the player, and that shows when a fourth of your audience seems to leave before even making it out of the intro corridor. Which is a shame because any of the issues someone might have from that slice of the game are resolved by the leveling system. As a tip, level up Air to begin with. It will give you more freedom to move around and choose your targets instead of fighting for your life at every moment. I am enjoying this as a way to witness the intent of archery combat in Skyrim and am looking forward to where it ends up.

This game isn't too bad, it's a great primal hunting game, it's music is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ AWESOME! and some of the tricks with how to dispatch some of the creatures is pretty cool "you can only see when it's in your peripherals, the head is too armoured, normal arrows are ineffective" and so on, and adding to the unique ways of dealing with them, the creature designs are very well done, some look vicious, some are down right disturbing, some take inspiration from the folklore behind SOME of the creatures you encounter (I can't say for all, there's a lot I am unfamiliar with) and the locations are pretty diverse and only accessible via natural progression and a little exploration I do have a few gripes to list though ... First of all, when I originally tried the game, it had started with a montage that doubled as a tutorial, it was one of the most badass ways I had seen a game open up with and it set the tone of the game pretty well, however, upon getting a computer that ran the game better some time later, I was a little saddened to find the montage had now been moved to the end of the game. At the time of writing this review, I JUST finished the game, the montage was still just as awesome as I remembered, but I can't help but feel it lost it's charm being AFTER the game is finished. Surely there would have been a way to keep the montage at the start then follow it up with the (now) current tutorial just for those who couldn't keep the pace of the montage, but that's just my own thought. The game has a lot of area to cover, and as someone who prefers to cover everything like clear the entire map, collect all the logs, hunt all the different beasts, I combed through the map back and fourth dozens of times and I still missed a noticable number of all those things I listed, there's exploration then there's getting lost in insanity, also, finding where to go WAS a little difficult at times, but that's not as much of an issue, that was usually a result of me getting turned around and forgetting where I been and where I was yet to go. The game has cool designs and such, but the models can also look a little too ... I dunno ... clean? like a little shiney, like things are made of plastic or something, I dunno, just has an awkward shine to it sometimes all and all, I rather enjoyed the game from start to end, despite my few gripes , so it's a thumbs up from me

Umm not my favorite. The gameplay could be a lot better. Clunky, slow awkward combat. Games where you have to go retrieve your stuff stink. Some people like that. I get it. But eh.

A music album with free game. Jokes aside, the immersion in this game is nice with really fitting music. It'll have you running like a madman or sneaking away. However, if learning everything via by trial and error isnt your thing, look elsewhere. This game doesnt hold your hand. Estimated playtime to game completion: 15~20 hours Pros: +Immersive open world gameplay. +Nice soundtrack. +has you running like a madman or sneaking away. Cons: -Tutorial could be better. -Would be nice if there was a better way to identify which powers you have equipped instead of memorising powers 1-5 in sequence. -Ending is rather anti-climatic.