Hades was developed following Supergiant’s Pyre, a game in which they wanted to explore procedural narrative storytelling, but due to the nature of the main gameplay, found that players did not play through Pyre multiple times to explore this. While Zagreus will often die, the player can use gained treasure to improve certain attributes or unlock new weapons and abilities to improve chances of escaping on subsequent runs.

The game has a hack and slash combat system the player uses a combination of their main weapon attack, a special attack, a dash ability, and a magic ability to defeat them while avoiding damage to progress as far as possible. Each run challenges the player through a random series of rooms populated with enemies and rewards. Players control Zagreus, the son of Hades, as he attempts to escape from the Underworld to reach Mount Olympus, at times aided by gifts bestowed on him from the other Olympians.

It was later released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S in August 2021. It was released for macOS, Nintendo Switch, and Windows in September 2020, which followed an early access release in December 2018. Hades is a roguelike video game developed and published by Supergiant Games.

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