I imagine most of us have some unusual games in our past, perhaps something that most people won’t have ever played. A weird rental, a kids game that turned out to be an unexpected banger, or something that was passed along from a family member. One of these games for me is SkyRoads, a DOS game that we had a demo of installed on a second-hand PC. Despite only having a few worlds to play, I spent hours of my life navigating roads in space with my little ship. As a teenager I found it again online and rekindled that love, but why am I telling you about SkyRoads now? Well mainly because new indie puzzler Axyz shares a similar odd early PC vibe to it, and is equally entertaining.
In Axyz you control a big ball, that you are rolling on top of cubes floating in the sky. This isn’t a physics rolling situation though, and the ball doesn’t contain any traces of monkey. Instead your ball is sort of magnetised to cubes, and can roll around them one square at a time, gravity be damned, to collect all the bits you need to. Once you’ve got enough keys you’ll unlock the exit and can go to the next level, and repeat this all over again. It sounds simple enough, but in practice you’ll need to play with perspective a lot to succeed.
Part of the issue is that you can only roll around to another side of the environment if you’re on a single width cube, which means you can’t just roll wherever you want. This sounds more complex than it is in writing and is easy to get used to, but does mean you need to figure out the best routes to get where you need to go. When in doubt you have some other tricks up your sleeve too, jumping and gravity switching.
There’s no nuance or skill to the jumping side of Axyz. You will always jump two squares in distance, and can use this to cross gaps or fall off edges in just the right way to land on new floating cubey platforms. Gravity shifting is a bit more flashy, but is still fairly simple to use. At any point you can flip your gravity to land on a surface above you, which you can use to explore far away blocks. At the push of a button you can look above you too to see where you land, so there’s no chance of just flipping to your death unless you’re being daft.
After a few stages you’ll get used to navigating the cubes for all the collectibles you desire, and then the hazards start showing up. These come in all shapes and sizes, and can often change the game from a slow and thoughtful puzzle experience to a more hectic one. Spikes will destroy you quickly, and some pop in and out so require timing to avoid. Some obstacles are more thoughtful though, like platforms that crumble once you step on them which will sometimes affect which platforms you can reach. Each of the game’s eight worlds will throw something new at you, and it’s fun to work out the best way to tackle them.
To beat a stage all you need to do is collect a specified number of keys and head to the exit, but if you want to unlock bonus levels you’ll also need to collect five delightfully retro cassette tapes. Finding all five of these will require some serious scouring of all surfaces of a stage, but if you’re a completionist and want to experience the hardest levels Axyz has to offer it’s worth the effort.
As much as I had fun actually playing Axyz, it was the audio and visuals that really made it stand out for me. The retro PC vibes are real with this one, with blocky visuals and a HUD that’s reminiscent of early media players. The soundtrack is great too, maximising the experience with drum & bass and synth for an awesome audio extravaganza.
There’s not really much to complain about with Axyz, it’s just a lovely puzzling time. Not all stages are created equal I suppose, and some of the world’s gimmicks are less enjoyable than others. The bonus stages are a wild jump up in difficulty too, which while fine in later worlds is pretty bloody jarring on the first couple where you’re just finding your feet.
Axyz is an engaging puzzle platformer with immaculate vibes, that leans more towards the puzzle than the platform. If your idea of fun is flipping gravity to find collectibles then this’ll scratch that itch perfectly, with tons of variety packed into over a hundred cubey stages.