Hades game design is polished; almost too polished. In this article, we’ll explain how the developers of the game meticulously tackled any game design challenge and in this process, created an almost perfect game.
When I first booted up Hades, I had no intention of diving deep into its underworld. My plan was to explore the environment simply, get a feel for the controls, and soak in the atmosphere – you know, the usual recon before a proper gaming session. Little did I know, I was about to embark on an epic journey that would consume the next week of my life. Fast forward 42 intense hours of gameplay, and I had “finished” the game. (You’ll understand those quotation marks soon enough.)
As someone who typically approaches games with a structured plan, losing myself for 42 continuous hours in a title I stumbled upon by chance is a rare occurrence. It got me thinking: what secret sauce did Hades possess that hooked me so quickly and kept me coming back for more?
This wasn’t just a fluke, folks. Supergiant Games engineered Hades with surgical precision. Every element of the game – and I mean every single moment – seems meticulously crafted to keep players engaged and craving just one more run.
Hades’ engagement factor was so important to Supergiant Games that, intentionally or not, the game has become a lesson in game design. It offers compelling solutions to many problems and challenges that game developers encounter during the design process.
From this perspective, Hades might rub some people the wrong way. The game is so meticulously designed, with such precise answers to game design challenges, that this level of perfectionism might seem a bit dull or off-putting. After all, true innovations don’t typically happen in such a sterilized environment.
However, if our criterion for evaluating a game is the polish of its experience, few games can compete with Hades. This claim is supported by the impressive 98% positive rating among Steam user reviews.
In this article of Polydin Game Art Outsourcing Studio, I aim to explain how Hades has achieved such a high level of polish by providing the best possible solutions to the most challenging game design issues.
Challenge #1: How to Properly Punish Player Failure?
One of the biggest hurdles every game developer faces is this: If a player fails in the game by dying or losing, how do we punish them just right? In other words, how do we ensure they’re bothered enough to try not to lose again, but not so much that they quit the game entirely?
This fundamental question has received various answers throughout gaming history. In the 1980s, at the height of arcade popularity, losing meant inserting another coin. To maximize coin usage, games of this era were designed to be extremely difficult but short. This unbridled difficulty, combined with the pay-to-continue model, resulted in game designs that were very simple, straightforward, and by today’s standards, rather crude.
The invention of memory cards for game saves ushered in a new era of failure punishment: returning players to their last save point. While this system is the most widely used punishment mechanic in games, it’s still not perfect. If you forget to save for a long time, or if save points are far apart, you might have to replay large sections of the game, which can become tedious. On the flip side, games that allow saving at any time essentially remove the element of challenge. Players can save every few steps, effectively eliminating any punishment for failure. Many PC games with Quick Save and Quick Load features inadvertently invite players to disrupt their gameplay rhythm by constantly thinking about saving.
After the release of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, games took a new approach: instead of manual saves, the checkpoint system gained popularity. This system was a smarter equivalent to manual saves. Developers would strategically place checkpoints at points where they anticipated many players might lose or die, ensuring that no one had to repeat hours of progress due to a momentary lapse in concentration. Players could simply retry the challenging section.
The checkpoint system was a safe solution to the “player punishment after losing” challenge, but it had a drawback. It made many games so smooth and straightforward that they began to feel more like interactive movies, diluting the meaning of “losing.” These games didn’t expect players to develop skills or play more carefully because no matter how poorly you played, you’d only restart from a few minutes ago.
None of these solutions fully resolved the issue of punishment in video games. Player failure was either too frustrating and time-consuming or completely meaningless. However, one game genre offered an intriguing answer to this question: the Roguelite genre, which happens to be the genre of Hades.
Roguelite is a subgenre of Roguelike. Games in these two genres differ from our usual conception of games because, on paper, they’re extremely short. For instance, in the longest Roguelike/Roguelite game, you should theoretically be able to complete it within 40 minutes. However, the catch is that these games rely so heavily on a combination of skill and luck that it might take dozens of hours for a player to reach the level of readiness required to complete that 10 to 40-minute run. In other words, these games are compact but incredibly deep.
This is why the challenge of losing in these games has been largely addressed. The reason? Losing is part of the gameplay process. Each time you start a new run, you encounter a series of random elements (random enemies, random items, randomly generated level structures, etc.). Everything is so challenging that you might die within two or three minutes, but all the information you gathered in that short time (like how a certain enemy attacks, what range a particular weapon has, etc.) brings you closer to reaching the end goal.
Roguelite games take a more lenient approach to this concept. In these games, each time you start over, you can acquire resources to purchase upgrades that will impact future runs. In other words, in Roguelite games, each time you fail, the next attempt becomes slightly easier, increasing your chances of reaching the endpoint.
From this perspective, the Roguelite genre might have devised the best possible punishment for player failure: in these games, failure is both meaningful and painful, yet it doesn’t give the player a sense of wasted time or pointless repetition. In a way, the Roguelite structure isn’t just a genre, but an attempt to solve one of the biggest challenges in game development. This is why the number of Roguelite games has increased in recent years – especially in the indie game market. It’s the pizza of game genres: it’s easy to make, and depending on the effort you put in, the final result can be excellent.
However, “Hades” goes beyond other Roguelite games in this aspect, as failure is woven into the narrative. Every time you die in this game, you return to the House of Hades, which serves as the game’s central hub. This house is populated with various characters, all rooted in Greek mythology.
When you emerge from the River Styx, the first character you encounter is Hypnos, the god of sleep. Hypnos comments on the enemy or boss that killed you, sometimes offering advice, often laced with humor. For example, one of the mini-bosses in the game is Asterius, the Minotaur. If you’ve been defeated by him too many times, Hypnos humorously mentions that he’s a fan of Asterius and asks Zagreus, the protagonist, to get his autograph the next time they meet.
The first time I heard this dialogue, I thought it was just one of Hypnos’ usual jokes. But as I encountered Asterius multiple times and Hypnos repeated his request, Zagreus eventually asked Asterius to sign something for him to give to Hypnos. The next time you return to the House of Hades and hand Asterius’ autograph to Hypnos, he’s overjoyed and thanks you. This little side story is a perfect example of how “Hades” alleviates the negative emotions associated with failure by intertwining it with narrative interactions.
This was a deliberate goal the developers had from the beginning. Greg Kasvin, the game’s writer, mentioned in an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun (and we paraphrase): “One of our non-negotiable goals from the early stages of development was to eliminate the harsh sting of dying and restarting the game. If the entire game is based on dying and starting over, the moment of death shouldn’t create overwhelming frustration. Instead, it should motivate the player to explore the game further and make them feel like the time they invested wasn’t wasted.”
Aside from Hypnos, the game features a wide cast of characters, each with something new to say in every run. To prevent these characters from repeating themselves after a short while, the game includes over 20,000 lines of dialogue. It took me around 120 to 130 hours to exhaust all of these lines, to the point where no character had anything left to say. However, most players likely stop playing well before this, as they reach a meaningful conclusion much earlier in their playthrough.
- Utilizing the Roguelite genre and its gradual progression system, which had already largely addressed this issue for the entire genre.
- Providing abundant story content so that each time the player dies, there are new dialogues to listen to and new narrative threads to explore. In other words, the game’s story and character development unfold as a result of your failures.
While dying in this game can be frustrating—especially if you were close to victory—returning to the House of Hades and hearing fresh dialogues, which are often directly related to the way you died, significantly reduces the sense of meaninglessness in that defeat. Other Roguelite games, due to their limited focus on narrative, lack this advantage, which is why “Hades” stands out in this regard.
Challenge #2: How Should Difficulty Be Designed So That Players of All Skill Levels Can Enjoy the Game?
Another ingenious feature of “Hades” is its approach to difficulty.
In a separate article titled “Dark Souls Doesn’t Need an Easy Mode; Neither Does any Other Game,” I explored this topic in depth. To summarize my argument, the traditional difficulty selection in games—especially during the first playthrough—is fundamentally flawed and doesn’t offer an ideal solution to accommodate players with varying skill levels. Every game has an optimal difficulty level, meticulously calculated by developers through testing and tweaking. Any difficulty setting that makes the game easier or harder than this sweet spot diminishes the overall experience.
By this definition, not all games are suited for everyone. Some games are inherently meant to be difficult, some are inherently easy, and others fall somewhere in between. However, the brilliance of “Hades” lies in the fact that it manages to accommodate a wide range of difficulty levels without resorting to traditional difficulty modes, making the game accessible to everyone without sacrificing its core characteristics.
At the beginning, Hades starts off quite difficult. Zagreus only has one weapon, dies quickly, and as the player, you don’t have much knowledge of the game’s mechanics yet. But this isn’t a problem. At this stage, dying is part of the game, and the narrative itself acknowledges your constant death.
Gradually, abilities and upgrades for Zagreus become available, making the game easier, and you can see your steady progression. These abilities are displayed on a screen called the “Mirror of Night,” where you can unlock different powers by collecting in-game resources. Some of the most powerful upgrades include an additional Dash, a second chance after dying, and an increase to Zagreus’ health at the start of the run.
Megara (Megara), the first boss you encounter in the game, initially seems impossible to defeat in the first few attempts. However, thanks to the upgrades and abilities you unlock, it doesn’t take long before you find yourself beating her consistently in each encounter. Even when you manage to defeat her repeatedly, Megara acknowledges this in one of the pre-battle dialogues, pointing out that Zagreus has become too powerful due to the Mirror of Night, implying that without it, he wouldn’t stand a chance against her.
This progression pattern continues throughout all areas and with the subsequent bosses: initially, the challenges seem insurmountable, but over time, through unlocking more abilities from the Mirror of Night and improving your own gameplay, you manage to overcome them all.
But the real genius reveals itself after defeating the final boss for the first time. At this point, a new element called the Pact of Punishment is introduced into the game, allowing you to make the game harder for yourself in exchange for additional rewards.
The exciting aspect of the Pact of Punishment is that it personalizes the concept of difficulty for each player. Each option in the pact increases the game’s “Heat” level by 1 to 4 points. For every 1-point increase, new rewards are unlocked for you. However, the key here is that the appropriate amount of Heat to raise varies from person to person.
For instance, the first option in the Pact of Punishment is called Hard Labor. Every time you increase this setting by 1 point, enemies will deal 20% more damage to you. It can be raised up to five times, meaning with 100% more damage taken, you’ll increase the Heat by 5.
The second option is Lasting Consequences, which reduces your healing effects by 25% for each point. You can raise it up to four times, meaning at 100% reduction in healing effects, you’ll increase the Heat by 4.
From the game’s perspective, achieving Heat level 4, whether through an 80% increase in Hard Labor or a 100% increase in Lasting Consequences, leads to the same reward. However, these two paths are vastly different experiences. In fact, maxing out Lasting Consequences is considered one of the most difficult challenges in the game, and even players who push their Heat level to 40 and beyond (an incredibly difficult setting) tend to avoid fully maxing it out. This is because at 100%, there is absolutely no healing. You won’t regenerate health upon entering a new room, nor from healing fountains, nor from restorative items found by breaking urns. In other words, by adding just 4 Heat points through Lasting Consequences, you’re making the game so challenging that it could potentially be harder than playing with 10 Heat from other pact options.
This system brings several advantages.
First and foremost, it optimizes the game for players of all skill levels.
Hades is among the easiest games in the Roguelike and Roguelite genres, which has drawn some criticism. At a certain point, the powers granted by the “Mirror of Night” and the Boons bestowed by the Olympian gods become so generous that defeating the final boss becomes almost inevitable.
However, once the Pact of Punishment is unlocked, you’re free to increase the game’s difficulty as much as you like. This gradual increase in challenge allows you to continuously unlock new rewards. (Many of these rewards are used to unlock decorative items for Hades’ house and new music tracks, providing a satisfying sense of progression).
The game sets two progression thresholds for you, each unlocking a symbolic in-game reward: Heat 16 and Heat 32. Completing the game at Heat 16 is challenging, but anyone with enough effort and persistence can achieve it. Heat 32, however, is truly painful. The game developers didn’t even create an achievement for it, not wanting to frustrate completionists aiming for all achievements. Personally, I spent about 20-30 hours struggling with it and often wanted to give up. Eventually, through a combination of luck, acquired skill, and watching YouTube tutorials, I managed to conquer it. In a way, beating the game at Heat 32 allows you to say you’ve truly completed Hades.
Interestingly, the highest Heat level you can reach in the game is 64. This means the game has the potential to become twice as hard as Heat 32! At the time of writing this article, only two people in the world have managed to beat Hades at Heat 64 without using mods or seeds, and the effort for this single accomplishment likely took hundreds of hours. Before these two succeeded, the general assumption was that beating the game at Heat 64 – without mods or seeds – was impossible.
Therefore, Hades’ difficulty ranges from easy (at least by Roguelike/Roguelite standards) to nearly impossible. In between, up to Heat 40 or 50, there are numerous options for personalizing the difficulty. However you configure Heat 32, the game will be very challenging, but the reason for its difficulty will vary from person to person and from build to build.
For instance, if you activate “Damage Control,” all enemies will deflect your first strike (you can increase this by another point, making it two strikes). For a slow weapon like Arthur’s sword, activating this option is very detrimental, as this sword has a very slow attack speed and each hit counts. For a weapon like the Twin Fists, which has a rapid and continuous attack speed, “Damage Control” is almost ineffective, especially if you receive Zeus’s Chain Lightning boon, which spreads your attacks among enemies.
Personally, I used this insight to beat the game at Heat 32 with the Twin Fists and Zeus’s Chain Lightning boon. Even though “Damage Control” accounted for 2 heat out of my 32-heat run, it practically had no effect, allowing me to avoid activating some of the more punishing conditions in the Pact of Punishment.
Hades’ approach to difficulty is one of the best I’ve personally encountered. From a certain point (roughly Heat 20 and beyond), the game forces you to think deeply about all mechanics, enemies, weapons, divine boons, and possible outcomes (both good and bad). You must decide which challenges you can handle, then watch how the combination of skill and luck brings you closer to the finish line.
If you don’t intend to play the game at high Heat levels and just want to complete the story, you can be assured that for casual players, Hades is one of the easiest games to finish. However, even with this ease, it takes an average of 20 hours to reach the endpoint for the first time.
Challenge Three: How Much Content Should be Included in the Game?
One of Hades’ most astonishing features for me was its constant revelation of new elements, even at moments when I thought the game had shown all its cards.
For instance, after I had become familiar with the game’s six weapons and their three different aspects, and had progressed significantly in the game, it suddenly introduced a completely new concept called “Hidden Aspect” for each weapon. These Hidden Aspects are dramatically different from the other three aspects and are tied to mythologies outside of Greece (for example, Rama’s bow from Indian mythology, Arthur’s sword from British legends, Enkidu’s talons from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and so on). These aspects are unlocked at a point when many players might think they’re close to finishing the game, but suddenly, the game reveals an entirely new dimension.
While playing Hades, you’ll frequently experience this: being surprised; surprised by the volume of new content; surprised that whenever you think you’re done with the game, there’s still something new to discover and unlock.
This design philosophy extends to the concept of “finishing” the game. Hades has multiple endpoints, each satisfying for a different type of player, but for those seeking more content, Hades always has something to offer. Let’s examine the different endpoints of the game and their roles (this section contains mild spoilers):
1. First Endpoint: Defeating the Final Boss for the First Time
When you defeat the final boss for the first time, you’ve technically accessed all of the game’s content. Unlike roguelike games such as The Binding of Isaac, where defeating each final boss unlocks a new final boss, in Hades, the final boss remains the same as the one you first encounter. From that point on, all the content you see in the game is simply a variation of what you’ve already experienced. Therefore, if you’re not particularly invested in the story or don’t have much time, you could generously consider this point as the end of the game.
2. The Second Endpoint: The Main Ending
After defeating the final boss for the first time, the story requires you to defeat them ten more times to see the true ending, which is when the end credits roll. By the time you reach this ending, you’ve probably spent around 40-50 hours with the game and experienced it in a meaningful way. If, at this point, you decide you’re done with the game, no one would blame you. After all, the credits have rolled.
3. The Third Endpoint: The Epilogue
However, the thing is that even after reaching the ending, the game is still not finished with you. Right after the main ending, an additional story segment called the Epilogue becomes available. To complete it, you’ll have to defeat the final boss multiple times again (but this time for a different purpose) and build relationships with the Olympian gods by gifting them Nectar and Ambrosia. This task is a rather long project in itself, likely keeping you engaged with the game for another 30-40 hours. But once you’ve reached this point, you could finally say that you’ve truly finished the game.
4. The Fourth Endpoint: Side Stories After the Epilogue
But no! The story of Hades continues even after the epilogue. The game contains a series of storylines, each unfolding over a long period and through many journeys from the House of Hades to the Underworld and back.
Some of these stories—like the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus or Dusa being dismissed from the House of Hades—occurred for me only after the epilogue (I say for me because the order of events can differ for different players). Even if you’ve seen all the stories before the epilogue, the game still offers a series of specific dialogues and interactions that occur post-epilogue, such as characters commenting on the events of the epilogue.
5. The Fifth Endpoint: Completing All the Prophecies
In the game, there are several prophecies that function as side challenges. These include objectives like defeating the final boss with specific weapon upgrades, rekindling relationships between certain characters, completing runs with all the conditions of the Pact of Punishment, and more.
Most of these prophecies naturally get completed as you progress through the game, but a few require special effort to finish. Two of the prophecies that took the most time for me involved acquiring all of the Duo Boons and Legendary Boons. Completing these challenges requires not only luck but also deep knowledge of how the game works.
6. The Sixth Endpoint: Beating the Game on Heat Level 32
This endpoint isn’t necessarily separate from the previous ones. Technically, it’s possible to beat the game on Heat 32 without having completed all the prophecies or even reached the epilogue. However, due to the extreme difficulty, I consider it a higher milestone than the previous ones. According to Reddit discussions, there are some players who have managed to clear Heat 32 on their first attempt (though improbable, it’s not impossible). Personally, I spent around 20 to 30 hours solely focused on clearing the game at this heat level, and it happened only after I’d reached all the previous endpoints.
After completing the game on Heat 32, around the 142-hour mark, I felt like Hades had finally given me everything it had to offer and that I was done with the game. But the intriguing part is, even after reaching this endpoint, Hades still has meaningful milestones left for players to conquer!
Seventh Endpoint: Buying All Decorative Items for the House of Hades
In Hades, there’s a character known as the “Wretched Broker,” from whom you can buy various items and structures using resources collected during your runs. Only a handful of these items have practical use (such as adding a healing chamber during your runs), but most of them are purely decorative for the House of Hades. Examples include statues, pillars, rugs for Cerberus the three-headed dog, aquariums to display the fish you’ve caught, fireplaces for the kitchen, and more. Accumulating enough resources to purchase all of these items—which steadily become more expensive—takes a significant amount of time. Initially, I aimed to buy every item, but I eventually realized that gathering all the resources needed wasn’t worth the time investment for me.
That said, since roguelikes and roguelites are games without a definitive endpoint—allowing players to continue indefinitely—these external motivations, like decorating the House of Hades, can add a sense of purpose to your runs. Plus, considering that some of these decorative items unlock unique dialogue, they could arguably be considered part of the game’s narrative content.
Hades features a vast selection of decorative items to purchase. In fact, one of the game’s simple pleasures is decorating the House of Hades, which initially appears bleak and empty but becomes increasingly beautiful thanks to your efforts. For instance, one of these items is a rug for Cerberus! And no matter what you buy, you can count on Hades himself to grumble about you wasting money. Given that the game’s core theme revolves around the struggle of a freedom-loving child against a strict patriarch, and the child’s efforts to soften the rigid mindset of their father, Hades’ strict demeanor sometimes takes on a humorous, almost relatable tone—like an overbearing grandfather scolding you for spending money on snacks.
Eighth Endpoint: Achieving 100% Completion
Achieving 100% completion in Hades—in the true sense of the word—is an extremely lengthy process. According to the author of this blog, who actually accomplished this feat, it takes at least 400 hours to achieve. The longest task officially recognized by the game is reaching the rank of “Unseen One,” which requires collecting 325,000 Darkness (this rank is entirely cosmetic). For comparison, after 140 hours of gameplay, I had only collected 56,000 Darkness. By the time you’ve gathered this much Darkness, you’ve probably completed every possible, albeit time-consuming, task in the game (such as upgrading all weapons to their maximum potential).
However, aiming for 100% completion doesn’t necessarily need to be your goal, as the rewards diminish relative to the effort and time spent. But the point is that the game’s creators have taken care to track the progress of those players who simply can’t put the game down.
Ninth Endpoint: Completing the Game on Heat Level 64
Yes, this is the challenge that only two people in the world have managed to accomplish so far (at the time of writing), and achieving it likely requires thousands of hours of experience in the game—though even that amount of time doesn’t guarantee success.
As you can see, Hades is a game that offers nine meaningful endpoints. No matter how much time and effort you’re willing to invest, the game has content to match that commitment. To be fair, beyond a certain point, this content may not be deeply meaningful and might just alter a few visual details. However, for players who want to continue beyond the Heat Level 32 challenge, the true joy lies in the gameplay experience itself, not in unlocking external rewards.
In this way, Hades follows one of the best principles of game design: however much time and patience a player invests in the game, the developer should reciprocate with equal care and attention. It should never become a one-sided relationship.
These days, many games are designed for players to engage endlessly, but often the developer relies solely on the player’s personal interest, without putting in much effort themselves, merely creating systems with countless variables.
Supergiant Games, however, has ensured that if a player shows extraordinary dedication to their game, they will reciprocate with more content, thanks to the extensive writing and recording of a vast number of unique dialogues and interactions, along with the deep gameplay elements that take a long time to unlock.
Fourth Challenge: How Should the Game Be Balanced?
Hades is one of the most well-balanced games I’ve ever played. The combination of various weapons and divine boons you can acquire, along with the synergy between them, is incredibly diverse and can fundamentally alter your playstyle from run to run.
Like all roguelike games, Hades relies on two core elements: 1) luck and 2) skill. The role of each element in determining a player’s success varies across different roguelikes. For example, in Nuclear Throne, luck plays a minor role, while skill is paramount. In The Binding of Isaac, luck is much more significant, and skill plays a moderate role (unless you’re playing at higher levels, where skill becomes crucial).
In Hades, skill and luck are almost equally important. With enough skill, you can complete the game with any weapon or boon combination. This holds true at least up to Heat 20. (Some weapons, like the Aspect of Arthur sword or the Aspect of Guan Yu spear, lose their effectiveness at higher Heats.) However, sometimes luck is on your side, and you get such powerful and synergistic boons that defeating the final boss becomes almost effortless.
This follows a simple principle found in roguelike games: the player should always be struggling to achieve victory, but occasionally, they should stumble upon such overwhelmingly powerful abilities that they feel nearly invincible. It’s during these moments that roguelikes can provide an intensely satisfying experience.
The key advantage of Hades, however, is that while these powerful boons and synergies exist, even if you don’t get them, you’re never doomed to failure. For example, this can’t always be said for other acclaimed roguelikes like The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon. In those games, if you don’t find a strong item or weapon early on, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to reach the end, and you’ll often find yourself struggling to defeat even the most basic enemies—unless you’re highly skilled. This can lead to bouts of frustration, as consecutive runs without good items can make you feel like you’re just wasting your time.
Personally, in Hades – at least before attempting to beat Heat 32 – I never felt that my run was doomed before reaching the final boss. Even in the worst conditions, the game might provide you with an ability in the next room that could turn the tables.
The reason for this is that in Hades, all strategies, items, and boons, while different, are not useless. In Hades, when you complete each room, the rewards for the next rooms are displayed above their entrances, allowing you to progress with full awareness. For example, if you have two rooms ahead, you know that in one of them you’ll receive a boon from Zeus, and in the other, your health will increase by 25 points. To make the right decision, you need to consider many aspects, which keeps you engaged with the game and reduces the impact of chance, but doesn’t eliminate it entirely. For instance, you might enter Zeus’s room hoping for a specific boon, only to find that it’s not among the offered options.
Another factor that prevents complete despair from overtaking you is the presence of Patroclus’s room in Elysium (the third of the game’s four areas). If luck is on your side and you encounter him, you can receive a powerful buff. This means that no matter how poorly you’ve played before reaching Elysium, a chance encounter with Patroclus can give you a new lease on life.
Despite the large number of variables in the game, there’s no consensus among fans about what the strongest weapon or build is. Personally, I was watching a video by Haelian, one of the most popular Hades streamers/YouTubers, where he was ranking the best weapons in the game. His ranking differed greatly from my own understanding of the game, and he effectively introduced weapons as the best that I hadn’t even tried in my entire 140 hours of play (like the Aspect of Chaos for the shield).
We really can’t say enough about Hades’ flexibility in covering different tastes, skill levels, and playstyles. The game never becomes insultingly easy, but in it you can employ almost any strategy and synergy you can think of. The only requirement is familiarity with the game’s mechanics.
Furthermore, as you unlock the Keepsakes specific to each god and the ability to change the boons offered to them, you can even minimize the role of chance and use your knowledge about the combat system and the role of different elements to largely guide the game in the direction you want. For example, if you’ve picked up a weapon with a high attack speed and you want to get Zeus’s Chain Lightning boon for it, you can take Zeus’s Keepsake before starting the run to ensure that your first boon is 100% received from Zeus; then you’re presented with 3 choices, and if Chain Lightning isn’t among them, you can use the Fated Persuasion ability of the Mirror of Night to change the offered choices until you finally get it.
To be fair, the balance of “Hades” isn’t apparent until you play it at higher heat levels, because at lower levels, the game’s rhythm is very fast, and if you get a few good boons (especially Divine Dash from Athena, which is generally considered the strongest boon in the game), you can simply progress by quickly pressing the attack and dash buttons back and forth without much thought. In other words, the game has great potential to fall into the trap of button-mashing, or pressing buttons quickly and thoughtlessly, and has been rightly criticized for this aspect. However, at higher heat levels, this aspect of the game becomes less prominent.
Hades: Game Design in Its Most Polished Form
If we were to assign a slogan for “Hades” from its creators, it would be this: Player, we see you. We’ve anticipated your every failure and success, and we’ve written dialogue for them. We’ve designed the game so that you never feel abandoned for even a moment.
Does this approach somewhat spoil the player? Perhaps. But maybe we all need this kind of pampering from time to time. The reason I became and remained engaged with the game was that, moment by moment, the game and I were riding the same mental wave with an identical frequency. In “Hades,” the two elements of story and gameplay function like the king and prime minister in a constitutional monarchy; wherever there’s a need for ceremony and political prestige, the king (the story) steps in, and whenever there’s a need for political knowledge and thinking, the prime minister (gameplay) takes over. The secret to the game’s success lies in this very aspect; at least until the main ending of the game, you’re constantly experiencing new things: new dialogue, new boons, new weapons, meeting new characters, new synergies, new challenges. The game has so much content, and it delivers this content to the audience with such perfect rhythm, that it never loses steam. Personally, I was caught in an addictive loop where whenever I entered the battlefield, I was eager to try new strategies and weapons, and whenever I lost and returned to the House of Hades, I was eager to listen to all the new dialogues with top-notch voice acting and learn about the latest news from the House of Hades. The game truly never gave me a reason to give up on it, and only real-life commitments forced me to tear myself away from it.
Is Hades a flawless game? No. My biggest issue with it was the enemy design, which I felt could have been more memorable. The music, while good, could also have been better. Additionally, after a certain point, Zagreus’ constant attempts to befriend and show kindness to everyone started to feel a bit artificial. While the developers aimed for Hades to ultimately be a feel-good game despite its heavy themes—and their effort in this regard is commendable—it might have been better if this positivity were woven into the story more organically.
However, the flaws are mainly related to aspects outside of Hades game design, which was the focus of this article. Examining the story elements of Hades would require a separate article just as long. But in the end, considering that Hades is an indie game, we should give its creators a standing ovation for all that it offers and for getting so many things right.
