(full screen = better experience)

AXON SURGE

You have no weapons. The enemies are your weapons.

You are a powerful psionic core trapped in the middle of a biological battlefield. The swarm is coming for you, but you don't need a gun. You grab the enemies themselves and turn them against each other.

Use your psionic powers to catch, drag and throw pathogens in real time. Smash them into each other and trigger their abilities: cut enemies in half with a Piercer, leave toxic plasma behind with a Spore, turn a Cluster into a storm of fragments, or collapse the swarm into a gravitational singularity with a Parasite.

And then things start getting stupid.

Different enemies interact with each other, creating chain reactions that can wipe out huge parts of the battlefield. Matching enemies can trigger even stronger versions of their abilities, turning a good throw into a ridiculous chain reaction.

The Heavy Shield adds another option. Throw it into the battlefield and it becomes a stationary defensive weapon, protecting the core while automatically turning towards incoming threats. Sometimes the best weapon isn't the one that kills something. It's the one that keeps you alive long enough to make the next throw.

Build Your Core

Destroying enemies generates XP. Collect it by moving towards the orbs or pulling them towards you with your psionic powers. Fill the core and level up to choose between different upgrades.

Powerups can expand areas and vortices, add fragmentation and guided projectiles, or give you new ways to control the battlefield. Your upgrades become part of the core itself, represented by coloured biological tentacles growing around it.

The stronger you become, the more ridiculous the battlefield gets.

Every Enemy Is a Weapon

Piercer is a fast enemy that can slice through other pathogens in a straight line.

Spore explodes into an acidic plasma pool that slows and dissolves enemies.

Cluster explodes into multiple cellular fragments, creating opportunities for chain reactions.

Parasite creates a gravitational vortex that pulls nearby enemies into a single point.

Heavy Shield is a heavily protected enemy that can be thrown into the arena and used as a defensive weapon.

The interesting part isn't learning how to kill each enemy.

It's learning what happens when you throw one into another.

A Bullet Hell Where the Bullets Are Alive

AXON SURGE is a continuous arcade bullet hell. There are no rooms to clear and no weapons to switch between. The arena stays around your core while the number of enemies, threats and possible reactions keeps growing.

The goal is simple: survive, build your core, and learn how to turn the chaos against itself.

AXON SURGE was created for Mini Jam 216, with the theme Psionic and the limitation Enemies are your only weapon. That limitation ended up becoming the entire foundation of the game.

This Is Only the Beginning

This is the beginning of something bigger. The long-term vision is to expand AXON SURGE with different types of cores, genetic memory, mutations, new enemies, bosses, new areas and permanent progression.

The goal is to keep building on the same core idea:

Grab the thing trying to kill you. Throw it at something else.

Then watch the chaos grow.