JustAxe Review

When wicked creatures invade the peaceful world of JustAxe, they bring a whole slew of problems, turning day-to-day life into a fight for survival. Some monsters are simply content to deplete a pub of all its beer and subsequently pass out on a wooden table, but a majority are much more hostile, swinging clubs, baring fangs, or dropping blobs of acid on innocent humans. For Martha — a young girl who looks like she belongs in Alice in Wonderland — the worst has happened, as her sister has been kidnapped by these dangerous beings. So what does Martha do? Does she twiddle her thumbs and wait for help? Absolutely not! After receiving a mysterious letter that suggests there’s a way to rid the world of monsters for good, she arms herself with a golden axe and heads out to do the impossible.

This sounds like the beginning of a grand adventure, and it certainly feels like it at the start, but as quickly as it begins, it ends. With a runtime of two to four hours, this 2D platformer struggles with pacing in its handling of gameplay milestones, challenges, and storytelling. It has interesting ideas and mechanics, but little space to explore them. A bigger game tucked into an extra-small box, if you will. Just as we unlock all of our abilities and begin to use them in interesting ways, we’re already on the last couple of levels, for instance, and just as the world is finally being fleshed out with more variety, puzzles, and characters, we’ve reached the end cutscene. While Martha’s goal is admirable, making it easy to root for her, there’s little build-up to her actually achieving what she set out to do, and ultimately, the entire experience falls flat.

Clunky movement and poor controls did make me thankful for the short playthrough, though. Martha’s base running speed feels slow and heavy, which is somewhat helped by a “sprint” ability given to you around the mid-way point of the game. However, while the game calls it a “sprint,” it’s actually just a dash that helps you get across large gaps, and unfortunately, it has a cooldown, so you can’t use it consecutively. Jumping worked fine all throughout, but the levels are often designed so that you’ll have to jump and hold the side of a ledge, at which point you’ll have to press an extra button to slowly pull yourself up instead of Martha doing it automatically. This impedes any chance of having a fluid run through a level, as it always feels like you’re stopping and starting, not too different from the awkwardness of having a car stall in the middle of the road.

Though it could be a pain movement-wise, I enjoyed the rewards of exploring, as you’ll discover collectables, health potions, and more. It’s very much worth going on detours to see what you’ll find. But the more JustAxe included additional ways to traverse its world, such as giving you a whip to swing across rings and pull on hooks or using your axe to scale walls, the more flaws reared their heads.

Most of the problems I encountered came down to two main things: accuracy and responsiveness. The whip, for example, sometimes had a delay that would make me miss jumps, or it just wouldn’t latch onto a ring, even if the animation showed it touching the very thing it was supposed to interact with. Wall climbing, however, almost made me rage-quit the game, which I haven’t done since playing something actually designed to make you frustrated, like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. The game would frequently put you in a position where you’d have to attach your axe to one wall and jump to an opposite wall, repeating that until you reached your destination above, but the problem was that it wouldn’t recognise which direction I was trying to jump, and more often than not, I’d jump the wrong way and fall back to my starting point.

Combat, thankfully, is more consistent — but still pretty lacklustre. While I liked the enemy designs visually, everything else about them seemed to be included like an afterthought. There’s nothing to write home about when it comes to their attack types, as most enemies simply run at you and damage you that way. Others can swat you with clubs, or a boss might shoot glowing orbs at you, but even then, the animations for those are half-baked. Unfortunately, Martha’s attacks are the most disappointing of the bunch. Your axe is, well, just an axe (staying true to the title, at least). You have a single melee attack, and that’s all. While it’s strong enough to deal with any foe you come across, it’s a shame we can’t at least throw it at enemies or imbue it with a little magic. For a weapon that is literally in the game’s name, you’d think it would have an extra oomph to it, but that’s just not the case here.

Despite my issues with the platforming and combat, JustAxe is a mostly mellow time, which is nice. The density of enemies per level is well-balanced, and there’s not much in the way of puzzle-solving until the last couple of areas, so you can just carry on forward without needing to put too much thought into what you’re doing. This, however, makes the last boss fight kind of jarring, as the combat’s tempo is kicked way up and attacks you’ve never seen appear. While the difficulty is a good challenge, I’ve always found it more satisfying when a final boss puts forth nearly all the obstacles and mechanics you’ve faced up to that point. Instead, I was rather unprepared for the novelty of this last fight with its almost lightning-fast attacks, and it had several ledges, which meant constant jumping and slowly pulling up Martha, making it quite impossible to dodge anything the boss hurled at me.

What JustAxe does particularly well is its presentation, though. The art style is quite beautiful, with detailed character designs, colourful environments, and varied locations. It honestly feels like you’re playing through a fairytale storybook. As a protagonist, Martha matches the charm of her setting, as well. Her upbeat yet sarcastic personality is a joy, and I would’ve loved for her to have more dialogue.

That said, in a sea of platformers, JustAxe doesn’t offer enough to stand out as a worthwhile contender from the bunch. The poor controls, clunky movement, and lacklustre combat definitely needed a rework and more polish before launch. While the game does have lovely visuals and delightful characters, it’s clear the rest of its components required more time in the oven.