Platformers are the go-to choice for many indie devs, and JustAxe puts itself out there with its cartoonish style and strange story. Players take on the role of Martha, a young girl in the town of New Soviets. After her sister was kidnapped by monsters, she sets out on a journey to rescue her and stop the invasion of strange creatures.
The big gimmick here is that Martha’s weapon of choice is the old family axe that’s been hanging on the mantle for ages, using her axe she can do more than just whack down trees. Her axe is relevant for attacking enemies and even platforming. So in the world of indie platformers, how does JustAxe stack up?
JustAxe
Developer: Super Galactic Gamedev
Publisher: Targem Games
Platforms: Windows PC (reviewed)
Release Date: April 5, 2024
Price: $10.99 USD
Visually, JustAxe has an unapologetically cartoony style, with a flat construction paper kind of look to it. The character design is cute and whimsical, with Martha herself having a unique personality with pigtails, a dress, but also an intense expression and narrow glasses. The monsters tread the line between silly and actually monstrous, ranging from walls of pastel flesh to faceless dogs with giant teeth.
Sometimes important features can blend into the background and aren’t clear at a first glance, this mostly comes up with hooks that you can drag to open up platforms and other areas. However JustAxe makes up for it by knowing how to “hide” secret areas, making strange interruptions in otherwise normal walls that make it easy to intuit secret areas. It reminds me a lot of the secret interiors in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island.
The music is serviceable, with calm instrumentals that suit the nature-filled stages of the early game but can get darker in tone when traversing the monsters’ portals. Ultimately there’s nothing too exciting, but while memorable music is always a plus, something that works is all you really need.
The actual gameplay is the meat and potatoes of every game, and JustAxe impressed me with some of its axe mechanics, namely the wall clinging and jumping. However there’s a lot about the gameplay that falls flat or just doesn’t feel good at all.
First, the actual platforming and stage design. In my opinion, the levels are too big. There’s a lot of empty terrain to cover and the levels feel even larger by having a lot of platforms that are just high enough to force Martha to do her slow ledge climbing animation. Combine this with the fact that the game encourages backtracking, and what you get is by the end of level 4 I just quit caring about collectibles, exploring quit being fun.
Enemies are predictable and more of a nuisance than a threat, especially on early stages. This is reinforced even more by the fact that enemies drop health on death and even if you get hit, more often than not you recover more than what you lost. Rather than difficult enemies, the game’s most punishing part is the hit-stun.
It’s both too-short and too dramatic. It’s easy to get hit repeatedly by spike traps or swarms of enemies, and the distance you get knocked back when you’re hit can undo some progress if you’re near a ledge.
The writing is also pretty cute, the back and forth that Martha has with characters is most of the game’s story, as well as some exposition from the final boss and the few in-game cutscenes the game offers.
Ultimately, JustAxe is a game that has all the key parts. Cute aesthetic, some neat platforming gimmicks, but they’re arranged in a way that’s just frustrating and a little boring.
There are definitely some cool and exciting platforming moments, but they’re broken up all too often by boring segments with slow climbing animations, and made all the worse for unchallenging enemies and poor hit-stun and too few invincibility frames on the part of the player.
JustAxe was reviewed on PC using a code provided by Targem Games. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. JustAxe is now available for Windows PC (via Steam).
