Dan Adelman, the former indie games chief at Nintendo, has called Sony-exclusive Axiom Verge “one of the best Metroidvania games” in years.
Dan Adelman used to be Nintendo of America’s indie game chief, building the company’s support among the independent games community. That changed last August when he left Nintendo to began work as a freelance consultant. Now Adelman has revealed his first project: Tom Happ’s Axiom Verge, a PlayStation 4 and Vita exclusive that isn’t coming near any Nintendo console in the near future.
“Although I will always have a special place in my heart for Nintendo, this game is solely focused on PlayStation,” Adelman wrote on his blog. “Sony has been super supportive of Axiom Verge, showing it at tons of shows like PAX and E3 and talking about it on the PlayStation Blog.”
Axiom Verge is a Metroidvania game designed by Tom Happ, focusing on exploration, combat, and impressively creepy monster designs. Adelman apparently was quite taken with the game after playing a build at PAX, and is now praising it at length on his blog and Twitter account.
“I was originally only intending to play for about an hour to get a sense of the gameplay and controls so I could have an intelligent conversation about the game,” he wrote. “But I wound up playing through everything that was in the build (3 worlds’ worth) and writing up a couple pages of notes … the things that grabbed me most were how tight and responsive the controls were and how well-designed the different rooms are. There are a ton of hidden areas to explore, and it’s possible to plan your attack through the areas so that it’s much more than just a run and gun shooter.”
Adelman is an outspoken figure in the indie games community, which actually prompted Nintendo to ban him from using his Twitter account. Now that Adelman is working independently he’s free to discuss whatever topics he likes, including gushing about PlayStation-exclusives he’s currently involved in. Axiom Verge is expected to launch in early 2015, and will likely see a Steam release sometime after the PlayStation versions.
Source: Dan Adelman, via Eurogamer
