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.