DLCAxiom Verge Original SoundtrackLoading store offers
Axiom Verge
Axiom Verge builds its alien labyrinth around exploration, combat, and glitches that alter enemies or help solve puzzles. The price at 
Eneba is $3.20. Its Steam player rating is 90% from 5,864 reviews; if that solo-focused mix appeals, weigh the asking price against your budget. At $4.99 on Steam, the offer at Eneba saves $1.79 against the comparable Steam version.
All-time low ~ $2.99across Steam & third-party stores
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $2.992024-12Current Low Across Stores~ $3.20Enebavs. Historical Low+7%
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
DLC
01About Axiom Verge
After a laboratory accident, a scientist awakens in a mysterious alien world. Explore a sprawling labyrinth, discover weapons and abilities, and battle biomechanical creatures. Glitches can alter enemies and help solve environmental puzzles. Steam player rating: 90% positive from 5,864 reviews. The Steam PC version supports English interface text. Released May 14, 2015.
Credits
Developer
Thomas Happ Games LLC
Publisher
Thomas Happ Games LLC
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$2.992024-12-19 · SteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Yes | Yes | — |
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
Show 5 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-22
02Before you buy
Exploration and glitches
Explore a labyrinthine alien world, find weapons and abilities, and use glitches to alter enemies and solve environmental puzzles.
Language and controls
The Steam PC version has full controller support and is single-player. English is among its interface languages.
03Frequently asked questions
What is Axiom Verge about?
After a lab accident, a scientist awakens in an alien world. Exploration and combat gradually uncover its mysteries.
Can I play solo?
Yes. The Steam PC version is listed as single-player.
What do glitches do?
Glitches can corrupt enemies and help solve puzzles in the environment.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
Let's assume that you already know that this is a metroid clone. Exploration, upgrades, weapons, etc. The question, is what differentiates Axiom Verge from its best competitors in the genre? Metroid-style games are common, and there are plenty of great examples that populate the modern PC game library. Ori and the Blind Forest, Guacamelee, Shadow Complex, and Mystik Belle are all good games that fall in the category. On the surface, Axiom Verge looks and feels like the classic NES Metroid. Deep down, it STILL feels like the classic NES Metroid, except it has tighter controls and a few neat tricks (like phasing through walls and corrupting enemies with a glitch-gun). What TRULY makes Axiom Verge stand above its competitors, is its ability to captivate the player by allowing them to get lost in an alien world. While all of the above-mentioned metroidvania games guide the player's exploration by bombarding them with "Go here next" hints, objective markers, and compasses, Axiom Verge stands alone by refusing to hold your hand and tell you where to go next. The main design aspect that seperated Metroid & Super Metroid from Metroid Fusion, was that the first two never held your hand. Instead they allowed you to, again, get lost in a mysterious alien world. So... Is Axiom Verge innovative? No, but it does what it set out to do so well that you might even recapture the same feelings you felt when you popped a Super Metroid cart into your SNES for the first time. Axiom Verge is a captivating game with much to see and do. The plot is mysterious and full of twists. Trace, the oddly-named main character, is a hapless victim of an accident that throws him deep inside of an unknown world, alone and unguided. The level design is engaging and packed with tons optional upgrades and weapons. Speaking of which, there are over 20 unique weapons, and a lot of them are just plain crazy. I can't forget to mention that there are plenty of ways to traverse the labyrinthine world of Axiom Verge, from ceiling-hook swinging Bionic Commando-style, to airdashing, to teleporting through thin walls, to remotely controlling small drones. You might be thinking "This is kind of expensive for such an old-looking game." But I assure you that Axiom Verge is one of the finest games in its genre. It isn't short either. Of 48 players polled, it took over 11 hours on average to complete the game.Show moreShow less
33.9 hours at review198 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Axiom Verge is another game for which I wish Steam had a neutral ranking. I'd call the game "tentatively recommended...with many caveats". Lacking such a rating category, I'll have to lean on the side of not recommending it. My number one complaint about the game is that the secrets, of which there are many, are handled in far, far too archaic a manner. Basically there are tons of blocks which appear solid but can be passed in one way or another; some are telegraphed visually, but many are not. This makes upgrade/secret hunting an excruciatingly tedious process of trying your several wall bypassing abilities on nearly every wall in the game. This isn't fun. Upgrade hunting in Metroidvanias is rewarding when there's some hint or indication that you can come back and get something later - and you remember it and do so. Stumbling into a hidden room because you exhaustively tried every ability on every wall in the adjoining area doesn't make you feel clever, it makes you feel like your time is being wasted by a developer who has no concept of fairness. I finished the game with barely half of its available weapon arsenal, which I only realized upon consulting a guide after the fact. Some were hidden so fiendishly that I'm surprised a developer would go so far out of their way to discourage the average player from getting to experience some of the more entertaining weapons that said developer surely put good effort into creating. Even if you do find some of them, most can only be obtained so late in the game that you never really have much time to play with them anyway, which is a shame because they are all pretty interesting and fun to use. Many details of game's story are similarly buried in hard to find journal entries, and from what I gather it seems like the developer is a bit too enamored with his grand designs there as well. It's overly complex and too obfuscated for the passive manner in which its delivered and I once again can't understand the logic of putting all that effort into it, only to then hide it except from the most obsessive of players. Now that being said - you can ignore the secrets, ignore the story, play the game in a straightforward manner - and it manages to be a decent Metroidvania, although even then not without foibles. Primary among them is a type of dash ability obtained roughly half-way through the game. This is activated by double tapping a movement direction which, when playing with an analog stick (an absolutely fine input method before that point) is often accidentally activated when you don't want it to, and annoying to pull off with appropriate timing when you do want to use it. A button dedicated to the dash would have been preferable. The tile based graphics are also a little too slavishly retro for my taste, to the extent that I'd even call the game ugly in parts, and on several occasions I had trouble distinguishing between foreground and background tiles. In my defense, this is because there are places the sames tiles are actually used for both - which is another of the misleading methods by which paths to items are hidden. The difficulty can range from infuriating to a breeze, completely dependent on what weapons you've found. While the ease with which some bosses can be dispatched with optional weapons would be a good reason to encourage exploration - as a new player experiencing the game for the first time, you have no idea that these weapons are out there to be found. Ultimately, I had some fun with the core game, but took no joy in the exploration and backtracking because of how things were hidden and that's pretty damning for a Metroidvania. There are far better examples of the genre in recent memory.Show moreShow less
14 hours at review281 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Very solid metroid style game. You could talk about the fact that one single person made it, but honestly it's good by any standard. Solid mechanically, stylistically beautiful, interesting storyline, challenging without being cheap or frustrating. Worth playing for any fan of retro gaming or side scrollers.Show moreShow less
10.8 hours at review161 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Being a metroidvania fan, I've been hyped about Axiom Verge for months. I couldn't wait for it to drop on Steam. So, I never thought I'd be writing a negative review for it. I did have fun with the game, but that's where the praise begins and ends. Of course, the soundtrack and art style are very cool and attractive, but the game proper underwhelms. The game length is quite short (8 hours with ~85% completion), and the early parts are fun, but you quickly become too powerful for any of the game's enemies to be a threat to you, even on Hard mode. Basically, that means Axiom Verge quickly becomes focused on the exploration aspect. While exploring is half the fun of any metroidvania, the game gets into a slump where you're just dashing around the map like a mad man toward any undiscovered map tile, ignoring enemies and trying to find the next powerup (which you only need to get to the next powerup, anyway). The enemies might as well not even be in the game; you hardly deal with them past the first couple hours of the game. The real problem with this game is the controls. Bosses get damn near impossible at the end of the game; one tiny tap on the control sticks will switch out your weapon, or enter the radial weapon select menu, or send you double-tap dashing in a random direction. The final boss fight was a nightmare akin to a Mario Party minigame, where I was spinning my D-Pad around and mashing buttons like crazy, just praying to get through it. The final upgrade you get is practically impossible to control, since it seems to have a mind of its own in terms of controller deadspace and which directions it "thinks" you wanted to double-tap. The bottom line is that the game suffers from simplistic level and enemy design. If enemies were designed to be tough at first but then much easier to beat with each successive upgrade, there would be a sense of difficulty progression, but the game feels like a flatline item-hunt after the first couple hours. Also, the story is mostly incomprehensible, although to be fair, I haven't read all the collectible note logs. It's possible that the story does get fleshed out and has a great ending, but I personally wasn't gripped by anything the story had to offer. That being said, I still think any self-respecting metroidvania fan ought to give Axiom Verge a go. I'd just wait for the game to go on sale.Show moreShow less
12 hours at review155 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Remember the demonic imagery and disturbing backgrounds of Ninja Gaiden as you got closer and closer to fighting the demon? How about the sci-fi creepiness of Metroid? Or the creepy alien lair of Contra? Axiom Verge takes these elements and cranks them up. The setting is creepy, the music unsettling, and the story increasingly disturbing. There's even some impressively melancholy chiptune music at one point. The game first starts out as an utterly shameless ripoff of Metroid. I'm talking totally shameless - everything from the enemy types to the types of environments encountered early in the game, to the Super Metroid-esque map - it all screams Metroid, and it's painfully blatant, to the point where I rolled my eyes and thought "Does this game have *any* originality?". Well, it does. Not only does the game not continue in this direction, it even deliberately subverts expectations. See that thin space that you just can't fit through? In Metroid, you'd get through it by turning into a ball. Axiom Verge never gives you an equivalent ability, but rather, a drone that can fit through spaces that you cannot. High up areas that you can't reach? Grappling hook - there is no Space Jump. Thin walls blocking your path? No, you don't speed through them and break them - you teleport through them with a special jacket. You don't freeze enemies to stand on them - you "glitch" some of them to stand on them, or you "glitch" the world on occasion. What's this about "glitches"? Well, Axiom Verge has a little fun with the fourth wall. Remember how NES games looked when they weren't working right? When graphics glitches caused things to get garbled and strange looking? When in some cases, a graphics glitch would even transform an enemy or object in such a way that its behavior became totally different? (as just one example, Chip and Dale on the NES had a weird glitch in the sewers level at the point where you went up, where if you managed to get the water at the bottom of the screen to turn white, you can suddenly stand on it as if it were ground) Well, this game does that for deliberate and sometimes unsettling effect. There are "fake graphics glitches" you encounter quite often, which perfectly simulate what actual NES games looked like when they malfunctioned. The glitches and how they are used almost make it seem as if the world is tearing itself apart - an impressive way to take an error from our childhoods and use it as both plot and gameplay device, not to mention to add atmosphere. There are even some creepy "outer world" areas that look like unholy glitched up messes with some filters that approach the fourth wall, such as filters to make the game suddenly look like it's being played on an old TV that's dealing with interference. Your "glitch gun" weapon (it's called the Address Disruptor) can invoke this deliberately to a degree, as it transforms enemies into glitchy abominations and even changes their behavior. An enemy may slow down, change its attacks from ones that harm you to ones that break through walls, or even try to escape you. Some of these behavior changes are the sort of thing you'd expect to see from a messed-up Game Genie code used on the NES. Or, appropriately, what NES games do when the memory addresses of objects get disrupted. This game's sole designer, Tom Happ, really knows the NES. The graphics, while retro-inspired, actually use certain design elements of the olden days to intentional effect. Areas tend to have their own color scheme. While NES games tended to do this out of necessity (without going into super technical detail, the NES had strict color limits due to how it handled its 8 palettes at any given time), this game does it deliberately. It starts out looking a lot more NES-esque, but gradually, more color is used. It works, and the areas, while generally not having more personality beyond "creepy and alien", "super creepy and alien", "disturbing and alien", and "kinda creepy but cool, and alien", still look distinctly different. They range from tunnels with pulsating organs hanging on threads to a very strange forest that looks like something that could not only never exist on Earth, but on any planet in this universe. The music and sound design is... interesting. Sounds are often loud and piercing, similar to old games. I assume this was intentional. The music is entirely different, and is quite the genre mix. One song I found particularly memorable started out as a melancholy NES chiptune with echo effects, and started getting louder and with more electronic non-NES instruments added. Another song features alien lyrics and chanting. The world is huge. You will get lost. You gain new abilities and new weapons constantly, giving a rather impressive feeling of progression that few games match. As you get new abilities that aid in travel, you'll naturally have to use them, and that's when it's time to look at the map and see which areas haven't been filled out. The hallway that seems to cut off on the map - is that because you got stopped by something and were unable to reach the end? Might want to check it out. The problem is that backtracking takes longer the further you get in the game, and there just aren't enough connecting areas or fast means of travel to really speed it up that much. I didn't find it a dealbreaker, and some enjoy that aspect of the game, but just be aware that it's there. My other complaint is that the end of the game ramps up the difficulty to such a degree that I had to use cheap tactics to fight the last few bosses and deal with annoying, tough new enemy types. I felt like I was fighting cheapness with my own cheapness. Not the best way to end the game. Despite these complaints, Axiom Verge is an amazing game, especially for being made entirely by one person in his spare time over 5 years. It's more than just a nostalgic throwback to the creepier side of the NES with its Contra, Ninja Gaiden and Metroid inspirations along with its oddly unsettling use of "glitches". It's also an amazingly creative experience that plays with the expectations of the 30-somethings and late 20-somethings that it's aimed at. Even if you hold no such nostalgia for that era and that style of game, it's still a great game.Show moreShow less
28.1 hours at review102 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Ambitious game, but too big for its own good. There's a certain balance that comes with making a good Metroidvania game, and while Axiom Verge manages to do some correctly, its critical faults prevent it from being something truly magical. First off, the retro aesthetic is spectacular. This is some of the best spritework I've seen in a long time. The music is reminiscent of the Metroid franchise, and while a few tracks stand out, the rest just blend together in their mediocrity, with a few being downright annoying. Sound design is fun and adequate enough and helps to set the otherworldly mood well. The first half of this game is absolutely wonderful. As you start to explore the map and find more items, you will slowly learn to maneuver your character around obstacles and make use of your new tools to get around. It's exactly what you want a Metroidvania to be. But then about 3/5 of the way into the game, you start to hit the wall, and this is where the game fails to live up to the legacy it's desperately trying to capture. There is NO way to know which of the dozens of passageways you've visited in the past is the correct one, and many times you will find a new path, hoping to progress the story, only to discover that it simply carries some useless collectable. There are no on-screen indicators to let the player know where an item is, and whether they've collected it, making even online walkthroughs fairly worthless unless you follow them from the beginning. You will constantly find new weapons to provide a variety of ways to dispatch your enemies, but there are so many and only a few of them are actually necessary to complete the game and unlock new paths. The rest are simply for show, providing a method of killing baddies that is pretty to look at, but fairly useless in the long run. It feels like the developers had too many ideas and couldn't decide which ones to keep in, so they just used them all in hopes of letting the player find one they like. I think once your weapon loadout starts to go past the 1-0 keys on the keyboard, it's time to scale back, guys. Certain weapons like the ice shard sprayer look impressive, and when you first acquire it, you think it would be useful for freezing water and solving puzzles, but it's really nothing more than a glorified machinegun with a wide spray angle and short range. Many of the weapons are like this, and it really makes the game feel unfocused. Axiom Verge is also HARD. And for no good reason, either. Enemies have obscene amounts of health, and deal massive amounts of damage, even on normal difficulty, and while they do occasionally drop health restoration pellets, it happens so infrequently you can never count on it when you are desperately low. The only reliable way to restore your health is to corrupt certain enemies and cause them to shoot out health pellets instead of bullets, or find a save point, which will also cause all the enemies to respawn. Enemies will swarm you constantly, forcing you to stop and fight them at every opportunity. Running through them and tanking the damage is NOT a reliable strategy until much later in the game. And weapon upgrade powerups are almost completely worthless. You would think there would be a noticeable difference in weapon strength after upgrading, but it will simply cause an enemy that once took 20 shots to now take 19. Yeah, it's that kind of game. And for as hardy as the enemies are, the bosses are almost insultingly easy. While they do have unfair amounts of health (sensing a theme?) their attack patterns are predictable, turning the fight into a battle of patience. Some even have areas where you are completely invulnerable, but your attacks can still reach the boss. Once the game realizes that you understand the enemy's attack pattern, it shouldn't still take several minutes of whittling down the boss's health just to move on. Then of course, it comes time to go for 100% completion, and that is where you really realize this game's failing. I managed to complete the game without any guides, simply through systematic searching and trial-and-error, but trying to get 100% made me give up, because it is F$%&ING IMPOSSIBLE. Each section of the map is separated into a different area, and the game only tells you whether you have uncovered all of the map, or all of the items. This is told to you through two dots that appear in the corner of the map, and no documentation what these dots mean. The only way to get 100% is to check an online walkthrough. There are plenty of these available online, so have at it, but here is a message to the developers: It is twenty-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-fifteen. (Going by the game's release date) Stop fetishizing the days of wandering around making no progress. Video games were made like that during the 80s because nobody knew how to make good games yet and they were experimenting. Online walkthroughs exist when a game fails to meet the expectations for what a player is supposed to know. Objective arrows, item markers, visual and sensory clues exist for a reason, and it's about time you learned how to integrate them properly into the games you design. If you want to put puzzles and exploration into the game, go ahead, but you are competing against a fanbase that has an entire encyclopedia of knowledge at their disposal and is not afraid to use it. If your puzzles are unintuitive and asinine, we will NOT care. If you refuse to give us tools to know what items we've picked up and from where, we will find our own. If that's what you want, then by all means, but don't expect us to praise you for giving us a complete gaming experience when we had to do half of the work ourselves. If Axiom Verge were more focused, perhaps giving the player only a small selection of weapons and making them all useful, and provided more in-game resources to assist while going for 100%, it could have ranked up there with the great fan Metroidvanias like Xeodrifter or AM2R. But as it stands, it's a game with a lot of dead ends, both in terms of game design and overall concept.Show moreShow less
15.7 hours at review95 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Axiom Verge is a 2D metroidvania style game developed solely by Thomas Happ and it is the closest thing to the original Metroid I have ever played in years. Not only that, but also an excellent example of how you need to make a game inspired by original Metroid. Axiom Verge has very similar design and gameplay, but improves upon every aspect of them to make something really unique and at the same time very recognizable to make you feel at home. Just like in Metroid games, there's a huge map you need to explore with unique areas and enemies in each of them. There's also a lot of secrets and hidden stuff to find including new weapons, story related notes and even random secret worlds which you can explore, each of which contains items and even unique weapon which is not available in the world map and not that easy to find. The game also has decryption device which not only can help you uncover hidden areas and Items, but also glitch some portions of the map to clear the way to the next area or even glitch enemies which can clear it for you or can fight for you in certain situations (this won't work during boss battles though). And if that's not enough, the game has a ton of unique weapons to suit your play style (22 or something in total including hidden ones) and variety of different abilities which can help you fully explore the map. The world of Axiom Verge is very unique and atmospheric, it has this organic and alien feel to it and it is also reflected in the soundtrack, which is just outstanding and surely one of my favorite soundtracks this year. But if there's one thing that upset me a bit in Axiom Verge... it's boss battles. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not that they are bad or anything, it's just they are not very challenging, well, except maybe one boss but still, most of them is very easy. I don't know, maybe that's because I have played so many metroidvania games before and kinda know exactly what to expect from boss battles at this point, but that is the only complaint I have about this game, other than that it's just absolutely incredible and really fun to play. Oh, and if you are a speedrunner, the game also has a special speedrun mode for you. Final verdict: 10/10 Axiom Verge is one of the best (if not the best on PC) games inspired by original Metroid.Show moreShow less
26.1 hours at review86 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I really, really wanted to like this game. I love Metroidvania titles, but sadly by the end of this game, I actually hated it. The first of Axiom Verge's problems is that while it has all you would expect from a Metroidvania game, it feels like it does everything it does only because that's what a Metroidvania does. By comparison, in something like Super Metroid or the more recent Hollow Knight, each location or screen justifies its existence with a unique challenge or sense of purpose. So while those maps are filled with shafts, corridors and rooms, each is unique and purposefully designed enough to confer a real sense of adventure and discovery. Axiom Verge is also full of shafts, corridors and rooms, but most fail to carve out an identity. As you backtrack in the best Metroidvania games, it's a fun journey back through places previously explored, but in Axiom Verge, it's just a trudge. The game has numerous procedurally generated secret areas, but sadly these highlight the map design's shortcomings. I was braced for something that came with the hallmarks of procedurally generated areas - the repetition, comparative lack of identity and so on. Yet they feel no different to the game's other locations to traipse through. And not because of any particularly impressive procedural work, but simply because the bulk of the game's main locations feel so lacking in gameplay spark themselves. This isn't uniform - locations like Kur impress more than any other area in the game, and it's a shame there isn't more like it. Another area which tries something more different is Edin, but sadly that brings me to the game's major flaw. Up until you reach Edin, the game is a solid but unspectacular Metroid alike. However, two things happen once you reach Edin. The first is that several incredibly annoying enemy archetypes become the predominant form of adversary in the game. It turns the last few zones of the game into an agonising crawl. It completely drains any fun out of the game. You can eventually find one of three weapons which deals with these enemy types more easily. However, these weapons can only be found in "hard" secret areas, of which only one will spawn per save file. In my case, the area was located essentially a few steps from the final boss door and was of no use whatsoever to me by that point. The second thing which happens in Edin is what I can only describe as the most awful boss fight I've ever seen in a video game. The bosses are mostly ok up until this point. Easy and bullet spongy, but at least involving and visually impressive. However the boss of Edin will haunt my gaming nightmares forever, and was so hideously frustrating I almost put the game down and never returned to it. The subsequent bosses aren't a lot better. It's a shame and I appreciate the huge undertaking this project must be for a lone developer, but I just didn't like this game at all by the end of it. It looks stunning, and had it ended 1/3 earlier I might be writing a tentative recommendation here. Instead, I really can't.Show moreShow less
8.6 hours at review92 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Tom Happ does what Nintendon't.Show moreShow less
18 hours at review77 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
First of all, the game crashed after a few seconds every time i would start it. Disabling the Steam in-game overlay and setting launcher option -force-opengl helped. This would be somewhat acceptable in early access, but having to debug a fully released game for 20$ is just embarrassing. The log4net config is broken, too, so the log files are empty and don't give any hint. I will compare to Super Metroid, because Axiom Verge is such a blatant clone of it. The game itself: + good mechanics + clever weapons and tools + soundtrack, but not coming close to Metroid Cons: - The most important part of Super Metroid: Level design. Levels are really, really boring in Axiom Verge and not atmospheric, with few exceptions. Most of the time, tile colors change. - Plot is clever, but the storytelling is horrible - Exploration feels ... unrewarding (see level design), except for frequent items. Developer should have taken some steps back and consider what aspects made Super Metroid a timeless classic. The actual effort in Axiom Verge is the game engine - it's a good Super Metroid engine. Would buy for 5$ on sale, not worth 20$ at all.Show moreShow less
4.2 hours at review72 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.