Axeras has big ambitions. The tactical RPG/strategy RPG/strategy tactics game by Malaysian studio Inverse Atelier aims to tell a war story through anime visuals. But that’s not the big thing about this game, I argue. Rather, it’s the scale.
Axeras is grounded on the same foundations as XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Move units from cover to cover between full cover and half cover. Shots can be hit-or-miss based on if you’re in the ideal range of the unit as well as RNG. All familiar fundamentals for veterans who have gone through The Long War or just vanilla XCOM and its many, many descendants since.
But each unit you control isn’t a person, it’s a unit of several individual soldiers which you can customise their composition. The demo provided an example of two soldiers equipped with assault rifles and one sniper specialist. There are also vehicles like tanks and transporters where you can load and unload units in. Maps are big, where it will take some time for ground units to cover distance on foot, not to mention risking them being open to incoming attacks.
And it will only get bigger.
I’m not sure if it’s the fault of the game or the fault of myself, but in one of the training levels, presented as a training exercise among the military group which the story follows, you’re competing against the other team to take out their designated “king” unit, set on a large map.
I find it a struggle to really move and position my units out of the starting zone, and ended up risking one unit to end a turn in an open space. Right on cue, the enemy team decided to pounce, moving every unit including their “king” towards the sacrifice pawn. After that stalemate has been broken, it’s business as usual: pick off important units (their snipers), pray every time you confirm the target you’re shooting, and regularly reposition units to flank the enemy.
With a few UI tweaks to make information of what you can do with each unit in a turn without having to pressing the move and attack buttons over and over and polished up graphics, Axeras can be something special.
And this doesn’t consider another interesting feature the game will have: the ability to recruit enemy units. With permadeath being a thing and how fast units can go down, the idea of being able to flip the red unit to blue sound compelling.
I’m not fit to judge whether the anime storytelling, with Japanese voiceovers and hand drawn animations no less, will be any good. But as someone that has cut their teeth in many a strategy tactics game, I can say Axeras is building on solid foundations. It’s now a matter of if they can truly deliver the experience of big battles using mechanics initially designed for small skirmishes.
Axeras will be releasing on PC (Steam). A prologue demo, similar to what we experienced at the Indie Jam 2026 show floor, will be made available later this month.