Nate Purkeypile discussed his newest project with PC Games after leaving Bethesda in 2021. While he worked for the company for around 14 years, he worked on several well-known games, including Skyrim, Fallout, and even the upcoming space RPG Starfield briefly. Now he runs Just Purkey Games and has been hard at work on his first-person shooter horror hunting game, The Axis Unseen.
Purkeypile just finished his game’s full map, which he claims is “five times the size of Skyrim” due to the wilderness aspect of the game. He says unlike the dungeon exploration in Skyrim, The Axis Unseen is entirely wilderness and so it requires “a lot of space to be able to go around.” This enormous expanse will have plenty of creatures from folklore around the world to interact with.
Now that the map is complete, creating those creatures is his next goal. This concept of global folklore is one of the traits that make this game so unique. After growing up near the woods and reading horror, Purkeypile developed a fascination for folklore monsters that many of us can relate to. He noticed that many of these monsters and stories overlap, and this led to the inspiration: what if the monsters of legend all came from the same place before spilling over into our world? The Axis Unseen is what he imagines that world would be like.
Even the hunting aspect of the game is an interesting spin. In this first-person shooter, you’ll be equipped with an elemental bow, but even fire arrows aren’t all-powerful. There will be an element of strategy included because each monster will be more affected by some arrows than others. Plus, you can combine elements in unique ways! Start a fire with a fire arrow and then help it spread quicker by using a wind arrow.
You will be properly hunting as well because tracking down the monsters is a major part of the game. Paying attention to tracks, smell trails, the wind direction, and more will help you find the monsters before they find you. In this hunting game, the prey hunts back.
“I think [hunting simulators are] a fascinating genre where the combat is really in-depth, and it’s all about wind direction and following tracks. But then if something notices us like, oh, the deer just runs away. What if there were monsters instead, and you [still] have those in-depth mechanics.”
Nate Purkeypile, PC Games Interview
According to the game’s Steam page, you will also be able to piece together what other hunters had discovered about the world before you arrived by reading their journals and inspecting their drawings. In the game trailer, it looks like a guidebook that would come in handy for finding monsters and for figuring out which arrows would be most effective against them. You can find that trailer below for a closer look at the game!
There is currently no release date for The Axis Unseen, most likely because the Just Purkey Games team is either very small or just Nate Purkeypile himself. But he did mention that work so far has gone smoothly.
