This Week In Retro: Axiom Verge

March 31, 2015: Proverb Edge? Maxim Threshold? Adage Brink?

by Diamond Feit

Love it or hate it, the portmanteau "Metroidvania" is here to stay. Many writers have tried to introduce generic descriptors for action games where players explore a singular "level" for power-ups and items that unlock new areas, but the people have heard "search action" and "exploraction" for years and no one's biting. Game developers, retail platforms, and even The New York Times have embraced Metroidvania by now; the sooner we stop complaining about the matter, the sooner we can enjoy playing these games instead of writing thinkpieces about their awkward nomenclature.

The irony of using a mashup of two different video game brands as a label for this genre is that the term rose to prominence during an era when very few Metroid or Castlevania games appeared on store shelves. Nintendo published two Metroid games simultaneously in 2002 but then the series output slowed to a trickle; 2010's Metroid: Other M underperformed at retail and left many fans & critics underwhelmed, forcing Samus to take an extended hiatus. Konami released the last original Castlevania game in 2008 before letting the brand coast into irrelevance as the Lords of Shadow reboot series never took flight.

With both Metroid and 'vania on the ropes, fans and developers embraced this vacancy to celebrate indie games that looked to carry the genre into the 21st century. Notable examples from this era include Shadow Complex and Guacamelee! which heavily borrowed ideas and visuals from the Metroid series—often in a winking fashion to appeal to fans.

10 years ago this week, a new indie Metroidvania launched on the PlayStation Network to wide acclaim. While making no bones about its reverence for Nintendo's Metroid games, Axiom Verge stood out thanks to its retro graphics, dark atmosphere, and killer soundtrack.

Axiom Verge opens by taking a page from Out of this World (a.k.a. Another World) by introducing players to scientists at work in an isolated laboratory. It's unclear what Trace and Hammond are up to in their New Mexico facility but something goes wrong and the entire building collapses. Trace manages to survive but when he comes to, he's no longer in the Land of Enchantment. He awakens inside a capsule not unlike the one where Darth Vader hangs out in The Empire Strikes Back. There's no one else nearby but Trace hears a voice telling him to find a nearby gun.

Confused and alone, Trace picks up the gun and begins to survey his surroundings; he's underground, there are strange creatures crawling on the walls, and the unseen voice urges him to keep moving forward "before he finds you." Trace doesn't like the sound of that but since his follow-up questions receive no answers, he continues to explore the slime-soaked subterranean chambers.

With no signposts or waypoints to guide Trace in the right direction, Axiom Verge adeptly uses dead ends to direct players' progress. When a pink beam of light halts Trace from advancing, a nearby red orb makes for an inviting target. One shot turns the laser barrier off. However, other gates have their orbs out of reach, forcing players to find a new weapon in order to open new paths.

It doesn't take long for players to stumble into real trouble when Trace walks through a door that shuts behind him. A massive floating sack of flesh and metal actually addresses him as "DEMON." Trace takes this as a sign to attempt diplomacy but his words fall on deaf ears (or whatever this thing uses to listen with). Instead, the brute cites the word of somebody named "ATHETOS" and pledges to "KILL."

One of the many reasons Axiom Verge succeeds as a video game is how Trace never acclimates to the harsh world he now occupies. Should players slip up and see Trace die, a short animation shows his consciousness leave his body behind and fly to the last capsule he visited. Anyone who's ever held a controller has witnessed this kind of restoration process in other software, but Trace is horrified by this development, immediately questioning whether the version of himself who steps out of the chamber counts as him or not.

In a Metroid or Castlevania game, the hero generally accepts that they have a job to do and sets about picking up new tools or skills to complete their mission. Trace's journey feels far more coerced; he's less interested in guns or bombs as he is in finding a way home. When he finally comes face-to-face with the voices who have guided him thus far, he helps them only because he has no alternative—nor do they, for that matter.

The fact that the augmentations Trace finds qualify as a form of body horror only enhances Axiom Verge's utterly alien atmosphere. Instead of armor, Trace picks up an old lab coat with a "biomechanoid" lining that lets him walk through walls. A Bioflux Accelerator grants him extra firepower via mutated stalks that protrude from his back. The Address Disruptor fires waves of energy that warp the environment and enemies alike in a manner reminiscent of glitched graphics seen in older video games. Yet I'm convinced that to Trace, it looks like the monsters he "disrupts" turn inside out.

Speaking of body horror, Axiom Verge's boss battles deliver plenty as each new behemoth Trace fights feels more misshapen than the last. These guardians have limited capacity for speech which they produce from their distinctly humanoid faces, even though the rest of their features no longer resemble that of Homo sapiens. In the game's freakiest encounter, Trace actually has to battle against a being bearing his very own face in a sequence that feels like a digital fever dream.

There's plenty of love about Axiom Verge based solely on its merits as a video game, but I also appreciate its background as a passion project by a single developer. Just as Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya spent half a decade making Cave Story in his free time, Tom Happ began crafting Axiom Verge in 2010 all by himself. Unlike Cave Story though, Axiom Verge's status as a commercial product put it under a spotlight, building anticipation for years before its eventual release in 2015.

On a special episode of Retronauts celebrating Axiom Verge's 10th anniversary Tom Happ described his creation as if it came from a parallel world where 8-bit games never fell out of fashion. "What would have been if somehow we had been forced to stay with these old engines and we just kept on improving them?" he asked, adding that he "tried to take advantage of all the things that we discounted as being 'retro,' you know, old school and no longer of the mode."

Axiom Verge did not merely satisfy my sky-high expectations when I bought it back in 2015, it exceeded them, eventually landing in second-place on my personal Game of the Year list. Expressing my admiration a decade ago, I wrote "Exploring other planets teeming with non-human life is par for the course in many games, but Axiom Verge feels more extra-terrestrial than its peers, Metroid included." Returning to Axiom Verge again to write this column, the quality of the pixel art and the rich, synthesizer-heavy soundtrack impressed me right away. 2025-me has far too many responsibilities to replay it at the moment but I struggled to put down the controller and pick up my keyboard.

Axiom Verge ends ambiguously, for while Trace manages to return to his home planet, his extraordinary journey drives him towards obsessive, radical behavior. Fortunately, the real-life Axiom Verge story had a much happier outcome as Tom Happ's work met with a positive reception critically and commercially. He released a sequel in 2021 and on the above-mentioned Retronauts podcast, he implied that more could follow in the future.

We're no longer starved for Metroidvania video games, as developers around the world have embraced the genre and new entries appear on digital storefronts seemingly every week. Even Nintendo eventually published a new Metroid game in 2021, meaning that today, Samus Aran and Trace both happily coexist on the Switch platform. I welcome our current abundance of games seemingly catering to my personal tastes, forever grateful that Tom Happ dedicated himself to one idea for so long and that his work paid off—both for him personally and for the medium as a whole.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.