Game of the Week: Axiom Verge (Randomizer Beta)

Another week, another game… of… the week! This… week we’ve got a community-created, officially-supported alternative version of 2015’s hit 2D pixel metroidvania, Axiom Verge.

Axiom Verge has you playing as Trace, a scientist who wakes up in an ancient, sci-fi world after suffering a crippling injury. Without further spoiling anything, you’ve basically got a huge map divided into nine big regions, all littered with powerups, weapons and secrets. To play the Randomizer version, you simply must own the normal Axiom Verge. It’s also very recommended to play through the normal version first!

What Does Randomizer Mean?

Basically, when you start a ‘randomizer’ run of Axiom Verge, it shuffles all the weapons, power-ups, health boosts and whatnot, meaning that where you once may have found a weapon, you now might find a +1 maximum HP boost.

The amount of items, as well that their spawn points, remains unchanged. Only the items themselves trade spots. What makes the Randomizer fancy, however, is that you’ll always have access to what you need to progress further.

If, say, you need to shoot a door with a specific weapon in order to unlock the next zone, you can be sure you’ll find that specific weapon in an already-accessible area, and within reach of your current platforming powers.

There’s three ‘difficulties’ of randomization you can choose, and they are dependent on your skill as a speedrunner (more on that in the next section):

Beginner: This is the option for most people. You should be able to complete the game without any shenanigans.
Advanced: For speedrunners familiar with exploits and glitches that let you skip through areas in unintended ways.
Masochist: This mode assumes the player will be doing a low % speedrun (getting to the end of the game having barely picked up anything). As of early 2021, only four people in the world were qualified for this difficulty.

Random(izer) Deets

The Randomizer version of Axiom verge was in fact developed by the game’s speedrunning community! It represents years of passion-project-tier work that was to thorough Thomas Happ, the creator of Axiom Verge, worked to incorporate it into the game as an official mode.

The Randomizer can be accessed either on Steam (right-click on the game and go to Betas) or the Epic Games Store, where it appears as a separate game alongside your copy of Axiom Verge.

Have you played Axiom Verge in any capacity? Did you ever try the Randomizer? Let us know in the comments below!