{"id":826988,"date":"2026-07-27T13:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/826988\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T13:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:19:10","slug":"haex-a-wilder-weirder-open-world-adventure-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/826988\/","title":{"rendered":"Haex \u2013 a wilder, weirder open-world adventure | Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wilds of the sub-Arctic north: towering pine trees, flashes of psychedelic-yellow lichen, and a sun that never wholly sets during the summer months. This land is gorgeous, yes, but also unforgiving, yet in Haex (pronounced \u201chex\u201d) you have an unusual tool at your disposal to make it a little more hospitable: a cube that fits snugly in the palm of your hand out of which grows a plant. You plant this so-called Seed in the earth and \u2013 voil\u00e0 \u2013 the world around you transforms: new vegetation and topography but also narrative threads to follow, and, naturally, enemies. Wield these small-but-mighty kernels of change at your own peril.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour adventure and your world is player-shaped,\u201d says Haex\u2019s creative director Tobias Nyman. He explains that everyone starts a campaign with a unique, procedurally generated world. Each Seed then contains further procedural data that causes it to terraform before your eyes. \u201cYou change the world as you go,\u201d he says. \u201cIt becomes even more unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

The singularity of each game world is crucial for keeping not just you but other players on their toes. That\u2019s another of Haex\u2019s wrinkles: it is an online co-operative game, meaning your friends may join you on this ever-transforming survivalist adventure.<\/p>\n

Room for more \u2026 Haex. Illustration: Dead Astronauts<\/p>\n

Teaming up, you play as a group of research scientists sent to investigate an anomaly in the rugged Scandinavian landscape. You come across odd, shapeshifting objects and beasts: for example, an ash-grey humanoid creature with spikes protruding from its face that would make even Pinhead from Hellraiser wince; also, a sentient wall so supermassive that it scrapes the clouds. There is a further layer to these spatial and, perhaps, alien mysteries: an unknown language of arcane sigils that must be decoded.<\/p>\n

Nyman talks effusively of influences: sci-fi movies such as Annihilation<\/a> and Arrival<\/a> (as is clear from the trailer); the weird fiction thrillers of author Jeff VanderMeer, too. Unexpectedly, the creative director cites the niche music genre known as cosmic black metal<\/a> as a touchstone. \u201cThere is the wild, grim, frostbitten north, an extraterrestrial entity and a thing that traverses the mist,\u201d says Nyman, hinting at a shared emotional effect between his beloved music genre and the game: a mingling of dread and awe, and of seeking transcendence in nature.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Nyman co-founded Haex\u2019s studio Dead Astronauts (another nod to VanderMeer<\/a>), in 2024, having previously worked at Ubisoft Massive, where he helped make recent open-world blockbusters, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora<\/a> and Star Wars Outlaws<\/a>. Yet where those titles\u2019 settings are gorgeous and gigantic (\u201cmonumental,\u201d stresses Nyman), they are also somewhat static. By contrast, Haex\u2019s game world is more dynamic, and it is being made by just 12 developers. The theory is that its morphing, geo-engineered space should foster more fluid, interesting experiences, despite Haex\u2019s focus on somewhat familiar-feeling shooting and survival mechanics.<\/p>\n

Taking the leap to independence has also enabled Nyman to make a game that is more personal to him. As a youngster, he split his time between Stockholm and the far north of Sweden. He recalls looking up at the night sky blanketed with constellations as his father explained Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity. Another memory: gazing out at an expansive crop of cloudberries \u2013 a \u201cfield of gold,\u201d says Nyman, by virtue of the small fruit\u2019s colour. What has stuck with him most, however, is the region\u2019s silence \u2013 a silence so great that it was \u201calmost screaming at me\u201d, he says. That feels like an apt summation of Haex\u2019s aims: an experience that is miraculous and malicious; a setting that is beautiful yet can feel as if it is bearing down on you with cruel intensity.<\/p>\n

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Haex is due for release on PC<\/a> in 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The wilds of the sub-Arctic north: towering pine trees, flashes of psychedelic-yellow lichen, and a sun that never…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,105],"class_list":["post-826988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}