Axiom Verge 2 stays mysterious and Metroid-y in this developer walkthrough

At the Future Games Show today, indie developer Thomas Happ gave a three minute overview of Axiom Verge 2, a Metroid-inspired action game he's been working on since 2015's Axiom Verge.

There's a lot here I didn't know: Axiom Verge 2 is a prequel, starring a new character, but the stories are loosely connected enough that you can play the games in either order. "Their mechanics are quite different," Happ says. "The games share the same DNA, but make no mistake, this isn't just an iteration of the gameplay you saw in the first game. It's a complementary piece of the overall puzzle that is Axiom Verge."

Happ's still keeping much of Axiom Verge 2 a secret, but says there are "tons of hidden areas to explore and mysteries to find." It's out this spring on the Epic Games Store.

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).