How to power up the Antarctic base and find the secret door in Axiom Verge 2

The opening of Axiom Verge 2 doesn’t hold your hand. You need to learn how to navigate the environment, pick up useful tools, and find secrets, all within the first five minutes. This guide covers how you power up the base, find the Ice Axe, advance through the secret door, and onto the rest of the story.

Step 1: Go left from the helicopter

The game starts with the protagonist needing to turn on the power in an abandoned Antarctic base. This is to your right, but you can’t get into it just yet. Instead, you need to run left and jump over some boxes to get into a small shack. Inside the shack is a useful tool that you’ll need for the rest of the game, the Ice Axe. This lets you smash the wooden boxes in your way, opening up all the blocked paths that are in your way as you try to get into the base.

Step 2: Power up the base

Work your way through the Antarctic base. The path is pretty obvious. Just follow the open paths and walkways. You will need to go in and out of a few different buildings along your way. The switch you need to press is bathed in red light.

Along your way, there’s a note to look out for if you want to collect everything and soak up some of the atmosphere of this world. Look out for it on your right as you climb up the stairs inside one of the base pods. You can use the Ice Axe to smash your way through to it.

There’s nothing else important that you need to do before pushing the switch, so once you’re happy, turn the power on.

Step 3: The secret door

On your way to the power switch, you may have noticed a powered-down computer in the previous pod. Returning there now will reveal a message that will only play once, so pay attention. It tells you that there’s a secret door on floor 1 next to the three bookcases.

This probably doesn’t mean much to you because you’ve been exploring these pods in darkness. However, even if you head downstairs and really look, it’s hard to tell what’s a bookcase and what’s a desk. Don’t bother trying to look for furniture. Instead, drop down the stairs and go all the way to the right. There’s a panel in the wall on your right that’s a slightly different color from the rest of the base. It’ll open as you approach it. Head through to progress the story.