The Axis Unseen, developed by Just Purkey Games and published by Dark Product for PS5, marks the solo debut of Nate Purkeypile, a veteran who spent years at Bethesda Game Studios shaping iconic worlds in titles like Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield.
This heavy metal horror game thrusts players into a vast, timeless open world overrun by nightmarish beasts drawn from global folklore, where you must track, hunt, and slay them to prevent their invasion of our reality. A first-person action packed adventure blending tense predator-prey dynamics with supernatural discovery.
The narrative unfolds environmentally through scattered journals and sketches from doomed prior hunters, piecing together the realm's origins and your role as the last line of defense. You play as a silent, tattooed archer whose body and gear etch the story of survival, with no voiced protagonist to overshadow the world's eerie revelations.
The Gameplay ...
A single-player experience at its core, The Axis Unseen offers adjustable difficulty, including a pacifist mode for photographing beasts to log discoveries, and permadeath for hardened runs. Playthroughs emphasize cycles of venturing from safe hubs into perilous biomes involving six distinct regions like shadowy forests and crimson abysses wherein you'll be gathering ethereal energy from kills (which you drop on death, Dark Souls-style), unlocking upgrades at glowing altars, and racing nightfall to shelter, all while mapping a 3D sculpture of your progress.
Combat revolves around a mystical bow for ranged precision, a knife for desperate close-quarters slashes, and stolen primal magic like rock pillars or shadow bursts, harvested from defeated foes. These feed into survival by demanding wind-aware stalking via blood trails and scents, heightened senses for heat signatures or supernatural glows, and elemental arrows using fire to ignite, wind to fan flames or redirect, lightning or time-warps for combos, tools that reward experimentation in ambushes or escapes. Exploration shines through on person and on weapon indicators. Your bow carvings show noise/magic levels, hand tattoos signal detection, turning every hike into a sensory hunt across colossal skeletons and fog-shrouded ruins.
The Presentation ...
Presentation captivates with vistas of jagged peaks, fleshy voids, and monolithic bones under flat, striking colors that evoke a living album cover, paired pulsing creature tremors through the controller and adaptive trigger resisting on bow draws. The soundtrack includes over 90 minutes of "primitive metal" by Clifford Meyer (ex-ISIS/Red Sparowes), fuses riffs with tribal drums, dynamically surging from brooding ambiance to brutal combat fury, immersing you in primal dread.
The Verdict ...
Overall, The Axis Unseen delivers stellar presentation and audio that punches far above its solo-dev origins, with visuals and sound design forging unforgettable tension. The gameplay impresses through innovative hunting loops and immersive tools, though occasional jank like loose jumping, finicky AI or frame dips holds it from perfection. Even so, patches show ongoing polish. It's a solid recommendation for fans of atmospheric horror-exploration like Shadow of the Colossus or stealthy hunts in open worlds, especially those craving metal-fueled folklore terror.
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