Hades

About

Hades is a roguelike video game developed by Supergiant Games. The game has the player take control of Zagreus, prince of the underworld, who must battle hordes of enemies and ascend his way out of the underworld. The game was officially released in September 2020, spawning multiple fanart and a substantial following since its days in early access. In May 2024, a Hades II early access sequel was released via Steam and the Epic Games Store, inspiring more memes about the series, as well as a viral debate over the sequel's character design update.

Development

Hades was first unveiled at The Game Awards 2018 on December 6th, 2018. The game was released in early access on the Epic Games Store the same day the storefront launched on December 18th, 2018, and remained a timed exclusive on the platform until December 10th, 2019 when it was released on the Steam storefront.

On September 17th, 2020, the game left early access and was officially released, including a release on the Nintendo Switch console.

Hades II

On December 8th, 2022, Supergiant Games^[5] announced the Hades II sequel, featuring a new main character, the Princess of the Underworld Melinoë. The studio also posted an animated trailer (shown below, left) about the sequel, which amassed over 6 million views and 262,000 likes in two years. On May 6th, 2024, the game was released in early access on the Epic Games Store and Steam. Supergiant also uploaded on the same day an "Early Access Showcase" video on YouTube^[6] (shown below, right), which garnered over 457,000 views and 26,000 likes in two days.

Reception

Hades was critically lauded by critics and gamers alike. The game holds an aggregated Metacritic score of 92/100. Nick Lemon of IGN called Hades "one of a kind," praising the game's mechanics and characters.^[1] Jordan Devore of Destructoid praised the game, praising Supergiant Games' ability to combine rogue-lite action with character-driven storytelling successfully.^[2] Game journalist and YouTuber Jim Sterling praised the game during his "Jimpressions" video, calling it his game of the year. Escapist game reviewer Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Punctuation praised the game's art direction, gameplay, and story saying that the elements of the game "fit together like a hideously complex clockwork machine."

Online Presence

Hades sports a dedicated subreddit for gaming discussion that has 82.5k followers as of November 2020.^[3] Hades also sports fanart dedicated to the game (examples shown below). The game also has a dedicated wiki.^[4]

Hades II Character Design Update

On April 17th, 2024, Supergiant Games released part of the Hades II game as a technical test that gave fans their first look at the new character design of the Greek Gods. The updated artwork of the Gods became a viral topic on X, as user @belllmonts^[7] shared some of the new drawings, captioning "the new god portraits in hades 2 are so tasty" (shown below, left), which amassed over 56,000 likes and 12,000 reposts in two weeks. The new art style inspired other artists to create fan art based on Hades II design, as X^[8] user @midnigtartist shared a Baldur's Gate 3 fan art of the character Gale as if he was a Hades II character (shown below, right), amassing roughly 8,300 likes and 1,700 reposts since posted on April 20th, 2024.

Search Interest

External Links