Axiom Verge

[Del Murder]

Anyone played this? It's basically metroid but with with a focus on a bunch of wacky guns. This is what I play when I have free time, and it's awesome.

What's your favorite gun?

[Bolivar]

I've had my eye on it for a while but I'm not 100% sold on the art style.

I know it's supposed to be 8 bit Metroid but do you like the way it looks Del?

[Ayen]

I've seen some gameplay of it on YouTube, but haven't played it. I keep spending my money on other games.

[Del Murder]

I've had my eye on it for a while but I'm not 100% sold on the art style.

I know it's supposed to be 8 bit Metroid but do you like the way it looks Del?
It is definitely styled like the 8 bit metroid. The environments can get a bit repetitive and drab in style but so far the enemy design is intuitive and reminds me of a cross between metroid and mega man. The bosses are big and colorful and definitely a highlight. The gun effects are also pretty cool and more like mega man boss weapons (but with unlimited ammo). The glitch weapon is one of the coolest I've seen and does interesting things when used on enemies.

[Sephex]

The only thing I can get this for from what I own is my Vita, so I've been thinking about it. There are whispers that it will go to other platforms that I own, so I am playing the waiting game now. I've heard great things about it, and I really do want to play this.

[Skyblade]

It's actually styled after the 16-bit Super Metroid, not the 8-bit original.

It looks very interesting. I might wind up picking it up on my Vita next time I'm looking for a new game. It'll be nice to see a game that actually follows in the footsteps of Metroid for once.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

According to the articles I've read about it, it's supposed to be between an 8-bit and 16-bit game in appearance.

The articles were before the game actually came out, so perhaps that changed, but that may explain the confused debate over it's looks.

I was super impressed with what I saw considering it was all the work of one guy. Then I forgot about it. :p

So tell us more about it Del. I'll definitely consider getting it if I don't have to play it on a little hand held. I'm spoiled, and want big boy console games.

[Del Murder]

A cross between 8 and 16 bit is pretty accurate. Let's call it 12 bit.

Tell you more? You get guns and shoot things and platform things. The shooting and platforming is essentially the same as metroid. The difference in this one is there is like 20 guns and you get them pretty frequently and usually they do something that opens up some other area. You also get power ups like health and making your bullets bigger or go further. There is also a story about how you got to this alien place and who these giant heads are that keep talking to you.

[Dr Unne]

Best game I played this year. 100% must-play. Metroidvania is my favorite genre and this is one of the very best games in this genre. I played it on PC but I might get it for other systems just because.

Yeah it looks kind of 8-bit, but even if you don't care for that look (and I very much love it), it doesn't look like an NES game. It looks like an NES game without NES hardware limitations, incorporating decades worth of refinement that's gone into pixel art and animation and level design. It runs at high resolution, infinity FPS, often with a million things happening on the screen at once, fully animated backgrounds, tons of destructible bits on all of the levels, and really cool weapon effects. The music is also very solid; not a beep boop borp NES chiptune (though I love those too), rather a modern synthesized version, probably what the Metroid devs on NES dreamed they could make. The game oozes atmosphere. There was exactly one part of the game where I wasn't rooted to my screen and that was because I sucked and kept dying. I couldn't put the game down otherwise.

The glitch mechanic is cool, but even more fun IMHO was the movement options you get later in the game. I was expecting the standard double-jump and wall-kick a la every game ever, but what this game did is waaaay cooler. The save/load system is also genius for reasons I won't mention. The level design was great; craptons of secrets and unlockables. I thought the bosses were kind of easy, but maybe I'll play again on hard mode and see what happens. My favorite weapon was Kilver for most of the game, but I swapped between guns a lot. Some of the guns were a bit pointless but a lot of them found a use, which was nice. I always thought one of the bad things about old side-scrolling Metroid games was how boring the guns were, and this game certainly fixes that problem.

This game was made entirely by one guy, Thomas Happ, including art and music and programming. Which is insane.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

The glitch mechanic is cool, but even more fun IMHO was the movement options you get later in the game. I was expecting the standard double-jump and wall-kick a la every game ever, but what this game did is waaaay cooler. The save/load system is also genius for reasons I won't mention. The level design was great; craptons of secrets and unlockables. I thought the bosses were kind of easy, but maybe I'll play again on hard mode and see what happens. My favorite weapon was Kilver for most of the game, but I swapped between guns a lot. Some of the guns were a bit pointless but a lot of them found a use, which was nice. I always thought one of the bad things about old side-scrolling Metroid games was how boring the guns were, and this game certainly fixes that problem.

This game was made entirely by one guy, Thomas Happ, including art and music and programming. Which is insane.

Yeah, I was interested in the glitch mechanic a lot. Since you're the first one to mention it, I am assuming it wasn't particularly memorable. Too bad, but everyone seems to love the game anyway.

I respect what Happ has done, and he deserves my money if it's as good as everyone thinks.

[Skyblade]

The glitch mechanic is cool, but even more fun IMHO was the movement options you get later in the game. I was expecting the standard double-jump and wall-kick a la every game ever, but what this game did is waaaay cooler. The save/load system is also genius for reasons I won't mention. The level design was great; craptons of secrets and unlockables. I thought the bosses were kind of easy, but maybe I'll play again on hard mode and see what happens. My favorite weapon was Kilver for most of the game, but I swapped between guns a lot. Some of the guns were a bit pointless but a lot of them found a use, which was nice. I always thought one of the bad things about old side-scrolling Metroid games was how boring the guns were, and this game certainly fixes that problem.

This game was made entirely by one guy, Thomas Happ, including art and music and programming. Which is insane.

Yeah, I was interested in the glitch mechanic a lot. Since you're the first one to mention it, I am assuming it wasn't particularly memorable. Too bad, but everyone seems to love the game anyway.

I respect what Happ has done, and he deserves my money if it's as good as everyone thinks.


The glitch weapon is one of the coolest I've seen and does interesting things when used on enemies.

The glitch gun wasn't just mentioned by Unne, Del mentioned right at the top of the page.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

Obviously I must have missed it. :shrug:

I still need to try this game at some point.

[Skyblade]

Unfortunately, right now it's only available on the PS4 and PC/Mac.

I was really hoping it had at least made it to Vita.

[Del Murder]

You could stream it to Vita if you have a PS4 as well, but yeah this is a perfect game for handheld.

[Dr Unne]

Vita version is coming. Last news I've heard is http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2015/05/14/axiom-verge-ps-vita-awaiting-monogame-support/ I was also hoping for the Vita version sooner than this, but the PC version held me over.

[Del Murder]

I beat this over the holiday weekend and got 100% map and items (except for that secret gun that's random for each save file and doesn't count toward 100%). Awesome experience overall and definitely the best Metroid clone I've ever played.

With a game with 20 or so guns in it I would have expected most of them to be useless. And for the most part they are. However, I was pleasantly surprised that a good 6 or 7 of them were my main gun for quite a while and various ones had different uses depending on the situation.

Like Unne said, the upgrades to movement to get to new areas were very innovative. No space jump or jetpack in this game! Getting to some of the trickier areas was very tricky since you had to combine a few abilities in ways you wouldn't normally think they were for, but I enjoyed that challenge.

I will say that the bosses were really easy but maybe that's because I would backtrack every time I got a new power up to unlock all the areas I missed.

Really fun game and I am impressed it was developed by just one guy. I hope he makes more.