Hades
A roguelike where failure advances the story. You play Zagreus, son of Hades, attempting to escape the underworld. Each death is a conversation.
- //Developed by Supergiant Games, a studio of roughly 20 people known for Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre.
- //Won Best Action Game and Best Indie Game at The Game Awards 2020. The first game to win the Hugo Award for Best Video Game.
- //Death is a story mechanic. Every time you die you return to the House of Hades and have conversations that advance the plot.
- //Full voice acting for all characters, with contextual dialogue that tracks your run history. A technical achievement for an indie studio.
- //Hades II is in Early Access as of 2024, following Melinoe (Zagreus's sister) rather than Zagreus himself.
Hades is an action roguelike where you play Zagreus, son of the Greek god Hades, repeatedly attempting to fight your way out of the underworld and up to Olympus. Every run is a fresh dungeon crawl with new weapon upgrades, boons from the Olympian gods, and enemy layouts, but the thing that actually sets it apart is that death is not a punishment, it is the delivery mechanism for the plot. Every time you die you wake back up at the House of Hades, and the characters there react to what just happened, remember your previous runs, and move the relationships and the story forward regardless of whether you actually escaped. You are meant to fail a lot on the way to getting good.
The game that proved roguelikes could have exceptional narrative. Every run matters. One of Supergiant's best, which is saying something.