Ex Skyrim dev’s horror hunting sim five times bigger than Bethesda RPG
An ex-Bethesda developer that worked on multiple Fallout games, Skyrim, and the upcoming space RPG game Starfield has talked to us about their upcoming folklore-inspired horror hunting game The Axis Unseen, which he started developing after leaving Bethesda.
Developed by Nate Purkeypile, who left Bethesda in 2021 after being an artist there for 14 years, The Axis Unseen is an FPS open-world game where you use an elemental bow and arrow to help explore and hunt down monsters from our world’s vast folklore. The twist is, they hunt you back.
“I just finished another big chunk of work, which is, the full map now exists. It’s five times the size of Skyrim,” Purkeypile tells us. “Because it’s focused on wilderness, you need a lot of space to be able to go around. It’s not about exploring dungeons and stuff. So it has six different regions that all look different and have their own weather and lighting and creatures. And that’s what I’m moving on to next, building up the rest of the creatures.”
In the world of The Axis Unseen you’ll be coming up against folklore monsters from across the world, and Purkeypile says the idea for this came from how he grew up near a forest, reading horror, and playing hunting sims. “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.”
All of the folklore monsters from across the world come from one place in The Axis Unseen, spilling out into our world from there. Purkeypile says that the idea of all folklore coming from one place and this leading to
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