Episode 106 - Rocketing Toward the Grave - Hades

Your podcast provides you with a certain mindless strength, but
such power has its limits. Welcome back to the podcast! This week,
we’re, along with everyone else over the last few months, talking
about Hades, Supergiant’s action Roguelite game. One of Hades’ most
successful design decisions was to make the game extremely hard to
become frustrated with. With an extensive list of unlockable
abilities and upgradeable weapons as well as in depth character
relationship paths, every time you die in the game you always feel
like you’re making some progress. Even more than that, though, you
actively look forward to returning to the hub, as each time you set
out, you’ll have goals in mind for what to do with the resources
you acquire on the run. This takes away the sting of losing a run
that dissuades many people from continuing with Roguelike games
most of the time, and makes you feel like you are always stronger
than the last time you began. And that’s just scratching the
surface of why this game has become so popular. Everything from the
music to the dialogue to the art is polished and enticing and the
mechanics feel like they have been boiled down from the essence of
what made Supergiant’s other games as good as they were. We’re
going to be talking about how the themes of the game play with the
genre and mix to tell a compelling story, how the core gameplay
loop keeps you engaged through multiple runs, and who in the game
gives off the best himbo vibes. Thank you for listening this week!
With this game in the bag, we can finally focus on actually playing
other games for the podcast… But did you get as sucked into Hades
as we did? What gods did you favor, and how many runs did it take
you to taste sweet victory for the first time? Let us know in the
comments, or over on Discord! Next time, we’re going to be talking
about Resident Evil 7, as Village is releasing early and we always
have too many games we’re excited to play around Halloween time, so
we hope you’ll enjoy a slightly out-of-season horror and check us
out then.