Fantasy games are a dime a dozen, being one of the most popular genres for video games since time immemorial. Nearly all of them are RPGs. Whether you likeDragon AgeorElder Scrolls,Baldur’s GateorElden Ring, you’ve got hours of tinkering with equipment or romancing party members to enjoy. And while all these games are incredibly distinct, the triple-A space tends to look a bit samey if you squint.
Indie games go further afield, and you can find everything from dragon dating sims to fantasy farming games, but these tend to go under most people’s radars. The fact that small developers can’t put as much money behind marketing means that many of us – even those paid to write about games – end up playing very similar RPGs over and over again. Just look atAvowed, the upcoming fantasy RPG from Obsidian Entertainment. It looks great, but it also looks incredibly similar to every fantasy RPG we’ve seen before.
Don’t get me wrong, I love all the games I mentioned above, and they’re all distinct in their own ways, but sometimes I want something radically different. The Axis Unseen may be that something.
The Axis Unseen is a good looking game, even at this early stage of development. Nate Purkeypile spent 14 years atBethesda, working on Skyrim, Fallout 76, andStarfield, and those influences are clear in the visual style. This is a game that looks like it’s set in Falkreath, but the gameplay couldn’t be further from the high-octane action of Skyrim.
This is a hunting game, first and foremost. You’re a tracker, armed with a bow and arrow and your finely tuned senses. This isn’t some Skyrim stealth archer broken business, this looks more akin to Hitman or Sniper Elite. This is a new kind of fantasy game.
For the most part, you’ll be tracking or hunting wild creatures. We’ve seen bears, creepy deer, and beings made up of masses of branches, but the skulls adorning cavern entrances hint at much more to come. The bow and arrow are drawn straight from Purkeypile’s childhood, where he spent hours at ranges or in woods with his own bow in hand, and creates a palpable sense of tension in the midst of a hunt. It’s not point-click-shoot, it’s point-draw-steady-release. This is as much about patience as it is violence.
That’s not to say there aren’t RPG mechanics in The Axis Unseen, they just seem to be less at the forefront than in other fantasy titles. The bow clearly shows glowing runes that presumably represent upgrades, and shrines (not too dissimilar to the Standing Stones in Skyrim) allow you to visualise animals’ scents or tell how recent tracks were made. Every upgrade is in favour of aiding the hunt.
He doubles down on this minimalist RPG design by reducing the HUD to, well, nothing at all. Want to check how many arrows you have remaining? Pull out your quiver and take a look. It’s this kind of diegetic gameplay that makes me think The Axis Unseen is different to other fantasy games, more immersive than the epic sagas of Skyrim or Dragon Age.
Purkeypile told NoClip a little about the game forits documentary about his early stages of going solo. He admits that his background with Bethesda may have given him a leg up, and may even be doing some marketing for him because people already have an expectation or comparison, but he’s doing everything else like any other solo dev would.
Purkeypile has utilised TikTok as a marketing tool, something probably not gleaned from his time at Bethesda. While his designs would be at home inThe Elder Scrolls 6, they can lean more towards the horror end of the fantasy spectrum. And the mechanics of the game are a far cry from Bethesda’s tried and tested offerings: his combat is slower and more methodical, his exploration is based on tracking beasts rather than following quests, and his RPG elements look well removed from the skill trees of Skyrim.
The Axis Unseen is due to release this year, and I’m intrigued to find out more as the year progresses. I just hope that Purkeypile sticks to his guns, and creates a hardcore fantasy hunting simulator that couldn’t be more different from the games he’s worked on before.
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