This is about the time of year when I would be working on a review of the new Axis Football video game. But that won't be happening this year. Fans of the indie Axis Football video game series will have to wait another year to get their hands on a new release of the game. Earlier this year, the development studio, Axis Games, announced (via the company developer blog) that they will be moving the game to a bi-annual release schedule. That means a new edition of Axis Football will only be released once every 2 years, instead of every year. As such, there will not be an Axis Football 25, and the next game will be Axis Football 26, which will presumably launch sometime in fall of 2025.
This is bittersweet news. On the one hand, I usually have a good time playing Axis Football each year, and am disappointed that I won't have a new version to play this year.
On the other hand, the new schedule will supposedly give the development studio more time to make more substantive updates for each new release of the game. The rate at which the game was improving has been slowing down the past few years, and a lot more of the features have felt incomplete or un-polished. We also weren't really getting broad updates each year. New features and upgrades were becoming increasingly narrow and focused on a few distinct areas of gameplay. In any given year, we would get either Franchise updates, or gameplay updates, but rarely both.
I did not feel that the playbooks were varied enough to justify a playbook editor.
For example, last year's game include a new playbook editor, but the game lacks the variety of plays and schemes that really make a custom playbook worthwhile.
Axis Football 23 was actually one of the best single-year upgrades for the series, owing largely to dramatic improvements in catch and pass defense animations, and an innovative player-in-motion system. But as good as that release was, it didn't have any new Franchise features. Well, at least not any explicit Franchise features. The other gameplay features, such as a new fatigue system, did have knock-on effects that indirectly improved the Franchise experience.
In any case, this new release schedule will hopefully mean that Axis Games can include substantial gameplay upgrades, and also Franchise updates, and also maybe new features, all in a single new release. Instead of having to spend time supporting an updated a new release every year, and also trying to port the game to consoles and phones, Axis can spend that time working on more features and updates. Hopefully, the result of all of this will be that Axis Football 26 will be the best release of the game so far!
Axis Games is releasing developer blogs about new features of the next game.
Unfortunately, Axis Games is still a very small indie studio. In fact, lead designer Danny Jugan might be the only full-time employee. I know they used to have some part-time developers, but I'm not sure how much (if any work) those individuals still do on the game. So they are still going to be limited in what they can do, and we can't expect a quantum leap in one new release.
What will be in Axis Football 26?
If you're interested in what Axis Games has planned for Axis Football 26, you can check out their full development blog. So far, they have announced a hand-full of new features and updates.
Axis 26 will finally be getting an Instant Replay system. This is a long overdue and welcome feature. It doesn't look like it's going to factor into the game's presentation. I don't think there will be automatic cinematic replays. The user will have to pause the game to view any particular replay. Nevertheless, it means we'll be able to look at exciting or interesting plays from different angles, and will also be able to study plays to find out why something like an interception or sack might have happened.
RPOs will be available in Axis Football 26.
Next year's game will also get RPOs and new hand-off animations. The blog doesn't say anything about whether Read Option or more traditional Pitch Option plays will be in the game, but at least the inclusion of RPOs will add a bit more variety to playbooks. The blog about handoff animations did also mention that the new animation system allowed Axis to add more delayed handoffs and play action keepers. So maybe we'll be getting some designed rollout and bootlegs too.
As of the time of this writing, the final developer blog reveals updated lighting, movement, and stadiums. Changes of direction are supposed to have more transitions, and should look more natural and organic. Stadium crowds will also be more dynamic, which will also allow for new weather and lighting effects.
I imagine there will also be quite a few additional features and upgrades in Axis Football 26 that we'll be seeing over the next year. The RPO and hand-off announcements were supposed to be part of a related 3-part announcement, but the 3rd part hasn't been announced yet due to it taking longer than the developer expected. Personally, I'm hoping that the 3rd announcement will be the addition of traditional option plays and formations such as the service academy Flexbone, which would be a good supplement to the RPOs and new hand-offs. But we'll see.
Hopefully, there are also new Franchise features as well. There's still quite a few items in my wishlist that haven't been implemented yet. So I'm still hoping to see things like an injured reserve, better player-development mechanics, opponent scouting reports, weekly game-planning, and so forth. Maybe we'll also get female coaches and players?
There are still many items on my wishlist that have yet to be implemented.
Will the wait be worth it?
Of course, it is yet to be seen whether the extra wait will be worth it. Ideally, this game will need a larger full-time development staff in order to really elevate it to the next level. Just look at what having a mid-budget publisher has done for the production quality of Maximum Football. That game looks orders of magnitude better than anything that David Winters could accomplish by himself. Of course, looks aren't everything, and I can't judge Maximum Football until it actually releases and I can play it.
Maximum Football is also moving towards more of a "live service" free-to-play kind of model for its game, which actually might be a better release model for sports games anyway. Instead of buying a new game every year, Maximum will be free-to-play, and be updated over its lifetime. This means that gamers won't have to start over from scratch every year when a new game comes out, and we can continue playing our Dynasties over the course of multiple real-life years.
I don't expect Axis Football to go free-to-play (I'm not sure the studio can afford it), but having a single retail release that is updated with annual free updates could possibly be a viable model. At the very least, it would be nice to have the ability to import our Franchise save file from a previous game into the new release, so that we don't have to start over from scratch every year.