Axiom Verge made its PlayStation 4 debut exactly one year ago today. To celebrate, developer Tom Happ has announced that the award-winning Metroidvania will be released for the Vita on April 19. Writing on the PlayStation Blog, Happ described some of the difficulties in bringing Axiom Verge to the Vita:
Tom Spilman from Sickhead Games was in charge of the porting process. Porting an engine to a new platform is an incredibly complicated task, yet he was able to pull it off easily for PlayStation 4. After the PlayStation 4 version was done, however, porting it to Vita turned out to be a lot more challenging. Optimizing an engine is slow and painstaking work.
One analogy that I like to use when describing getting Axiom Verge working on PS Vita is that of a lightbulb. For months, Tom Spilman was putting in all of the wiring, but until it was fully connected, the light bulb just couldn’t turn on. And finally, about a month ago, Tom Spilman was able to make the final connection. The build went from not running at all on Vita to running almost perfectly. There were a few bugs here and there that needed to be tweaked, but most of that was fairly minor and easily handled.
Axiom Verge will be Cross-Buy compatible between the two platforms, so if you already own the PS4 version, the Vita version will be available as a free download. And if you’re new to the world of Axiom Verge, you’ll be happy to know the game will receive a 10% discount for a week after the launch of the Vita version.
Earlier this month, Happ confirmed that Axiom Verge is also in the works for the Xbox One and Wii U, and it should be available on those platforms sometime this year.
