Axiom Verge

Playtime: 12.8 Hours

Finished 08 June 2025.

Several years after giving up on the PS Vita version, I decided to do a salty runback of this game on the Switch version - this time, using a map & walkthrough for items and secrets so I wouldn't get stuck in the same way as my previous playthrough. With it, I did a playthrough on Normal getting 100% items, 100% map completion, and all 5 secret worlds (which are untracked in statistics). It might be worth noting that the save file shows ~99% map completion, because the final boss arena counts as the final tile and the game does not make a clear save. The Switch version had the advantage of an extra pair of shoulder buttons, so I didn't have to do weird touchscreen stuff; a huge improvement of the gameplay compared to the Vita.

Axiom Verge is a very impressive game, entirely made by a solo developer (Thomas Happ) back when these kinds of one-man indie darlings were a bit less common than they are today. As a Metroidvania game, I feel like its inspiration is drawn most significantly from the Metroid series but with lots of unique twists that really bring a unique atmosphere and style. The world exudes a mixture of cosmic and vaguely Lovecraftian horror, with a dying man somehow seemingly resurrected into an apocalyptic alien world hiding a deeper mystery. I don't particularly care for the direction in which the story ended up going as I felt like intensifying and ramping up the creepiness of the excellent atmosphere would have been better than just going back to normal. That really only comes into play in the ending cutscene, though - the aesthetic design of the environment is fantastic throughout all of the actual gameplay.

Speaking of gameplay, that's really the meat of why the game is worth playing to begin with; unsurprisingly, interactions with other characters in this game is a rarity, and only really exists to give you your next objective. This is a fairly standard platformer Metroidvania, all told - controls are tight and movement is clean, though I wouldn't say anything feels perfect per se. For one, the grappling mechanic is a bit awkward physics-wise and led to no shortage of headaches trying to traverse the world for most of the game; though by the end, given your other movement options, the grapple ended up being kind of useless outside of some very extreme scenarios -- mostly in getting maximum height for a few tricky map tiles when going for 100% map completion. Also, free aim completely locks you in place (minus the ability to jump), which makes a lot of encounters requiring more precision feel a bit stilted by the fact that you can't really fluidly aim and dodge a mobile target. Other traversal mechanics like the coats and the drone teleport are really cool, and utilized very well in the map design, but the rather finnicky way to activate them makes this game feel much clunkier than the smooth gameplay of Metroid. Perhaps it's all part of the design intent, as I never felt like I really required the agility of the Space Jump or the other elements of Samus's kit, but it's a bit hard to avoid the comparison anyway.

The unique selling point of the game is the massive number of unlockable weapons that you can obtain, with tons of interesting weapon mechanics that come into play in certain situations, or against specific enemies. Some notable examples are the Kilver, which is basically a superpowered wall-penetrating short-ranged burst that is super useful for killing things up close and behind thin walls, and the Ion Beam, which is your standard giant penetrating laser beam. But there are plenty of more exotic weapons, like the Voranj, which is a shotgun-like weapon creating a tree-like, maybe almost fractal-like web of beams when you fire it, or the Hypo-Atomizer, which regularly fires off small bolts perpendicular to the main beam - this actually comes into play for a boss that you need to hit indirectly, which is really neat. There are way too many weapons in general try explaining each, but I feel like relatively few of them actually end up being serious game changers that you actually rely on; most just feel like curios that you play around with for a minute or two before switching back to the usual suspects. This is especially true in the endgame once you get the Flamethrower, which basically becomes your permanent primary -- with extreme DPS and both enemy and wall-piercing capabilities, it literally cooks everything in your way with no trouble, up to and including the final boss. The only caveat is that it's hidden pretty well behind a secret wall.

Many of the other distinguishing features of the game's flow and world are also really neat. I feel like the "hacker" theme is handled quite well, without it being overbearing or ubiquitous to become cringy, yet not so far in the background to be irrelevant. A concept behind many of the mechanics in the game is the idea that Trace can somehow "hack" the world, manipulating the nature of the environment and enhancing himself. For example, you get a tool partway into the game allowing you to enter codes to unlock various effects - giving Trace the ability to understand alien languages, or unlocking secret doors and areas (for example, the Flamethrower room mentioned above). A more prevalent mechanic is your ability to hack tons of stuff, both related to the environment (usually involving erasing walls) and most enemies! Effects vary greatly; some enemies explode on death, others turn into harmless platforms, even others might explode into a health drop. They're defined per enemy type so it's not truly random, but the differing behaviors can be greatly beneficial (or disastrous) depending on the situation, which is really fun. The extent to which this is implemented here is something that I don't think I've seen in any other game.

The game world is roughly split into several sectors, kind of like any Metroid game basically. As mentioned, traversal can be a bit slow and clunky, which is most noticeable during endgame cleanup but otherwise doesn't really impact the game negatively. I do like how the map is very nicely laid out with a convenient region, Indi, basically acting as a giant people mover connecting almost all of the other regions in the game (exceptions are E-Kur-Mah and Mar-Uru, the two lategame "dungeons"). Additionally, there are 5 extra-hidden dungeons in the game known as "Secret Worlds" that are generally extra-challenging marathons of rooms packed with enemies, with some extra upgrades as a reward. They also feature a pretty cool "CRT effect" which kind of gives it a sort of computer-y vibe which is also nice. In general, progression is tracked quite closely and very nicely by the game - the map UI will show two little dots if you found every item, or if you completed every tile per region. Weapons, upgrades, and other miscellaneous items like logs and text files are also tracked pretty extensively.

Enemies and bosses are kind of interesting, but pacing can be a bit weird sometimes. Regular enemies generally aren't really worth speaking about - some can be very dangerous, especially the lategame sentries, but most of them aren't really much different from things you'd find in any other Metroidvania or platformer, outside of the cool hacking mechanic. Bosses are a different beast, and are honestly a bit of a mixed bag in this game. You fight several "variant" monsters, but the pacing makes no sense - after the first few hours of the game throws them pretty consistently at you, the game all of a sudden basically just stops having any real boss fights for most of the rest of the game. There are a few "encounters", sure -- but off the top of my head, one of them is impossible to win, and some others are basically impossible to lose. Even the endgame "boss gauntlet" in Mar-Uru consists of one boss that is completely free to kill and a second that you can just skip altogether by walking away. Not sure what's up with the pacing here; it feels super strange, especially since the giant mid-game drought comes in just as you begin to find tons of new weapons that you might want to play with. Finally, when the game comes to a close, the final boss also just ends up being an absolute joke of a fight, one of the easiest in the game. Its only offensive attacks are from the sentries it summons, that barely do any damage and drop more HP than they take from you. You can also simultaneously kill the sentries and the boss with the Flamethrower; all you need to do is jump up and down while aiming straight up, I didn't even use any movement keys. This isn't even unique to the flamethrower - several other weapons could have done the same thing.

That takes me into a number of small gripes I have with this game. Thankfully, they're all pretty minor and didn't significantly impact my experience, but I really hope that these can be improved on for future projects. Firstly, several of the bosses (particularly in the early game where they're an actual threat) have very difficult-to-gauge health. They get more and more red as you damage them, but as their initial palettes are already a bit pink- or red-tinted, many of them look incredibly deep red about 25% of the way into the actual fight which is super misleading. Ideally, they should only start changing their tint at all once they're pretty close because it's otherwise actually impossible to tell how far you are. This is especially true for the Scorpion and Wasp bosses. Exploration and secrets could be a bit better as well; lots of them are hidden behind completely invisible walls, unlike other Metroidvanias that might give some basic hints for something being there (ex. cracked walls, enemies phasing through terrain, etc.). Since this game's environmental design is kind of noisy (even if pretty), it's just too hard to tell when there might be something that you can do. Most of the time it's just variance in the tileset. On the subject, the tedium of 100% map completion honestly sucks -- having to chain awkward grapples into coat dashing and drone teleports doesn't work too well with these clunky controls.

I don't want to dwell on my irritations with the PS Vita version of the game that I tried and failed to play through twice (FWIW, I got ~80-90% of the way through!), since the game's control scheme understandably had to be stripped down somewhat to support the more restrive controls on the handheld system; I'm just surprised it launched on the PSV at all. At the end of the day, I'm truly glad that I decided to give it another chance on another platform (Switch 2, in my case) since I finally saw how the game shines without that little bit of awkwardness. My takeaway this time around is that this is a fantastic and very unique Metroidvania that very well deserves the reputation that it's earned. Honestly, I can't quite say I'm interested in Axiom Verge 2 given the reduced emphasis on exploration, but this first entry at least is timeless.