How Hades Was Made and Why its Early Concept Didn’t Work

Hades is another successful indie game carefully crafted by Supergiant Games, the creators of Bastion, Transistor and Pyre. While Hades definitely shares some of the DNA of those aforementioned games, it was developed in a very different way. In fact, before the team even had the idea for Hades, they had already decided to open up their development process to the public and give players the opportunity to help shape their next game as it is being made.

Development started in August 2017, right after the release of Supergiant’s previous game Pyre. Everyone from the studio, around 20 people at the time, was invited to talk about what they wanted to do next. What are they passionate about and what themes would be interesting to explore, were one of the many topics of conversation. Creative director Greg Kasavin highlighted the priority to make something that was more extensible, a concept that the studio could continue to build on after release, as opposed to their previous titles that were a one-and-done deal. 

Greg mentioned in an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun that even Pyre, with its branching open-ended storytelling, feels like a game you’d only play once. Still, he and the rest of the team prefer a more open-ended narrative structure so the decision was made to refine what they’ve done before and implement it in a roguelike dungeon-crawler this time, a genre Supergiant Games loves. Since the studio was set on doing Early Access, a roguelike game also felt like the best choice, because it offers lots of replayability while it’s still being finished. One of the goals was to make a roguelike where every run feels unique and pushes the story further. “Whatever form the narrative would take, it was meant to make moments of story that’d intersect with the action and help contribute to memorable runs.”

With the urge to create a game that can be played over and over again, while still maintaining a compelling and fresh experience every time, the developers started to think about a theme that would fit around this direction. First, they looked at their previous established worlds to see if any of them would fit their design goals. Even though the studio has never made a direct sequel to any of their games, it’s not something they’re opposed to doing. They just don’t want to do it unless the time and circumstances are right. 

Eventually, the decision was made to create an entirely new world that could be tailored to all the team’s ideas centered around replayability. Greek mythology quickly came up as a source for a new setting and characters. While this particular theme is nothing new in the video game landscape, Greg felt there were still lots of uncharted territories to be uncovered. 

“As the person doing the writing, I was very drawn to a particular angle on Greek mythology. What I feel is often lost in the shuffle is that the gods are a big dysfunctional family that we can see ourselves in. I think part of the reason these characters have survived for thousands of years is because they relate so strongly to so many people and they relate not because they are gods but because they are human. So we wanted to explore some of that. It felt rich with potential for us, so yeah we started making it.”

The idea of receiving godly powers from Olympians such as Zeus and Poseidon quickly solidified itself early in development and made its way to the final game. Something that didn’t make it however, was the labyrinth of Minos, the maze that houses the famous Minotaur. Supergiant Games explored the concept of finding your way through a constantly shifting labyrinth as the character Theseus, who according to the legends, defeated the Minotaur at the end of the maze. During the early days of development, the project was even referred to as Minos.

This version of the roguelike played around with the Theseus legend and every run would be a sort of retelling of the mythical story. Unfortunately, fleshing out Theseus as a character proved to be a stumbling block the team couldn’t find a good solution for, despite going through multiple iterations. He was an interesting character on its own, but bringing him to life as a protagonist had the risk of making him very generic. Adding more details on the other hand, made Theseus seem like a different character entirely.

Around the same time, Greg Kasavin was reading several different translations of two major Greek poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey and discovered the existence of a little-known God called Zagreus. According to some, Zagreus was the prototype for Dionysus, the God of wine. On top of that, there’s also some evidence suggesting he’s the son of Hades. When Greg dived deeper into this, he found out there are actually very few stories about this specific Greek figure. Greg told The Verge that the Greeks were apparently afraid of Hades and therefore were reluctant to write stories about the God of the underworld and his offspring.

This lack of information made Zagreus the perfect replacement for Theseus, as it opened up the possibility to create a more original and exciting story, instead of sticking to the Greek legends that were already written. And better yet, the developers were able to keep many core parts of the game without too many adjustments. Within a day or two, the creative director was able to convince everyone else at the studio that Zagreus was the better choice. 

Altering the protagonist to Zagreus did change the setup for the story, but luckily for the better. The idea of attempting to escape Hell and get away from your father seemed to possess a fun, light-hearted tone that has a kind of slapstick quality to it that’s shared by many roguelikes, feels Greg. “One moment in Spelunky or FTL you feel on top of the world, and then you make some bone-headed mistake and throw it all away. You feel clumsy and stupid and you hopefully laugh at yourself.”

Now that the core elements of the project were becoming more clear, the devs moved their attention to the wider Olympian family and wanted to portray them as one dysfunctional group of people, trying to support Zagreus in their own way. The team decided to not stick too closely to already established designs and choose to introduce more diversity among the Greek Gods instead. Just by taking a quick glance at some of the incredible designs made by art director Jen Zee, you can see a stark contrast to more traditional depictions. For example, Athena is a black woman, while Hermes is an Asian male. Amir Rao, the studio director, said the reasoning for this was that “Greek gods were worshiped in ancient Greece, not because they themselves were ethnically Greek.” 

Amir added to this that the people working at the studio are children or grandchildren of immigrants and this has a direct effect on how the team approaches every aspect of their games. Although Supergiant Games took Greek mythology in a refreshing new direction, Jen Zee wanted to honor the source material as much as possible, something she cares about a lot as an artist. One of those more classic inspirations was the idea of heroic nudity that dates back to ancient Greek art and culture. It was something the developers explored as part of creating the overall look of Hades and that’s why practically all of the characters in the game are rather attractive to say the least.

“For some of our characters, their attractiveness in fact is part of who they are. Aphrodite and Dionysus spring to mind. For chthonic gods such as Nyx or Thanatos, I think their beauty is more effortlessly incidental. They are the personifications of these profound concepts such as Night and Death — we felt, how could they not be beautiful?”

The dark, fantastical ink artstyle in Hades is inspired by the works of incredible artists like Mike Mignola and a mid 19th century poster artist called Fred Taylor. All the 2D art was made in Photoshop and the 3D assets were modeled and animated in Maya. Post-processing was done in After Effects. Some additional tools the artists used were Zbrush, Substance Painter and Marvelous Designer. 59 portraits, 68 models, 194 boon icons, 1,400 environment textures, 32,494 FX animation frames and 942,489 character and enemy animation frames were made in total.

Features such as The Trial of the Gods are meant to create interactions between the Gods themselves and show how fickle they can be by expressing their displeasure with you when you don’t side with them. These little events are all part of the greater narrative design that Supergiant Games tries to push further and further with each new title and is supposed to give players the sense that the game is paying attention.

Creating this narrative design was especially challenging during Hades’ development, since the player doesn’t follow a direct linear path and encounters with the many different characters can happen in any possible order. Apart from a couple of moments, the developers have no idea how things are going to be sequenced and how they unfold for each individual player. 

In an interview with The Verge, Greg explained he and the team developed a system that analyses what happens in the game and sees whether it matches a huge list of events that Greg himself has written. The list is big enough for tens of hours of play before it starts to repeat itself. It’s by far the most ambitious narrative in terms of scale that the studio has done so far; no less than 20,000 lines of dialogue were written throughout development.

Besides making the game more interesting, the various storylines were also implemented to relieve the stress from dying. Additionally, the developers took great care in giving players the feeling that not a single run feels wasted, by inserting multiple materials you can collect along the way to the surface. These can then be used back at the hub area to decorate your room and invest in your combat skills. “It was an explicit goal of our early development, to take the pain out of dying and having to restart. If the whole game is structured around dying and restarting, then we had to make sure the moment of death isn’t about rage-quitting. You have to be compelled to explore further and feel the time you spent wasn’t a waste of your time.”

Supergiant Games aspires to create titles that have both narrative depth and gameplay depth. One of the ways they add depth to gameplay is by providing the player with different playstyles as they progress. The developers wanted to take that sort of design a step further with Hades and encourage the player to experiment with different weapons and abilities. When someone feels like they found the perfect combinations of skills and tools, the studio hopes they’ll get nudged into a combination that is even better or maybe just different in an intriguing way.

Greg also describes the gameplay as making the most of a situation you can’t entirely control in some cases. During development, he and the team noticed that that kind of structure can make for gameplay that continues to be surprising and interesting over time. This mostly comes down to defining enough overlapping systems that can interact with each other to where suddenly richness emerges from the play experience. Every run should feel like a slightly different experience that keeps players coming back for more.

A lot of roguelikes have the reputation of being very difficult and therefore scare off a lot of casual gamers. The team looked for ways to mitigate that aspect of Hades by giving players multiple ways to obtain health items for example. Later on in the game you also get access to boons that cause a chill effect and slow down enemies. There’s also combat effects like Sturdy that absorb some damage. This, combined with the compelling storylines and permanent upgrades for your character and hub area, was all done with the goal of making a roguelike that was approachable for all types of players.

From the very start, it was a high priority for the team to create their next title using the Early Access model, with the intention to make the best game possible by gathering feedback from players during the early stages of development and building it in partnership with the community. When enough core parts of Hades were in a playable state, Supergiant Games released it on Early Access in December 2018. At the time, it was only available on the Epic Games Store for a number of reasons.

The devs expected Hades to be in Early Access for at least a year before moving onto the 1.0 release so they needed the flexibility to update the game at a fast pace. This made launching on multiple platforms an impossible task. With a team of around 20 people, Supergiant Games simply didn’t have the manpower and necessary skillset to work on multiple versions of Hades at the same time. Another key factor was that they were building the game to not only be enjoyable to play, but also enjoyable to watch. A storefront that supports streamers would therefore be an ideal pick. With those specific goals in mind, they looked for the ideal platform that would suit their needs the best. 

When the developers started a dialogue with Epic, it quickly became clear Hades and the Epic Store were a perfect match for their Early Access experiment. Part of Epic’s focus with the store is to help enable streamers and YouTube content creators to essentially get a piece of the action. “I think streamers and YouTube content creators have had such a significant and overall beneficial influence on games over the years that it’s really only fair that they should be able to benefit more from the incredibly hard work that they do. So on a personal level, that spoke to me, I think it spoke to other folks I work with, just as part of the priority that Epic was interested in.”

The Epic Store also had the added benefit of being a brand new storefront at the time. Greg explained that users on other platforms are used to Supergiant games being 100 percent complete so the studio didn’t want to change those expectations and still guarantee the kind of experience the players on those platforms are used to. Epic’s storefront was free of any expectations so it made more sense to do Early Access on that specific platform.

The developers approached the Early Access release as a sort of pilot of a series, where it’s a lot of setup, you meet a lot of the characters, and you figure out what the conflict is all about. But the resolution of the story is not all in the game yet and more characters and events in the story will be rolled out over time. Along with just improving every other aspect of the game.

The switch from releasing a fully completed game to releasing an Early Access version, wasn’t an easy one. Before, Supergiant Games would work towards a certain milestone about every three months and the milestones were often rather undefined. With Hades, the developers spent a lot more time planning the entire process. Every milestone now had very clear goals and were completed every month, beginning by making major changes to the code and typically ending with play testing, bug fixing, polishing and making other final changes. The studio calls it a more mature and disciplined approach.

This big shift in their internal development was necessary to allow for a streamlined Early Access process, where players were able to provide feedback and the developers being able to implement changes based on that feedback in the next monthly update. It created a very dynamic and transparent relationship that benefited both parties. Supergiant Games had a much bigger pool of playtesters that was able to help shape the game into its best possible version by telling what they liked and didn’t like, what was working and what wasn’t. Not to mention the incredible fast rate of people detecting and reporting bugs, something that was invaluable to the team.

The players saw their efforts rewarded with a game that was improving every month, getting richer and richer with content. The High Speed update, The Big Bad update, The Superstar update, The Welcome to Hell update, The Long Winter update, The Nighty Night update, The Blood Prince update, and more, all vastly improved the overall game and implemented new areas, weapons, characters, storylines and more. Pushing out these updates in quick succession would have been impossible without the support of the passionate community behind Hades.

Supergiant Games took great care into making the Early Access version feel like a living, ever evolving world. For instance, the game would comment about new Olympians that showed up in new updates through things like character dialogue. It almost gave the impression that the story was taking place in real time.

Greg Kasavin mentioned it was fun seeing the active player base advocate for different weapons. For instance, lots of people wanted the bow to be better and others became big fans of a certain Olympian. Those players wanted to see their style of gameplay become more meaningful so the developers took that feedback to heart and iterated on all the weapons and Godly powers. Additionally, individual character storylines were also adjusted in unexpected ways based on player feedback. Dusa and Skelly for example were only meant to provide a bit of comic relief, but the community loved them so much that they were given bigger roles over the course of development. 

One of the feedback systems they used was the possibility for players to upvote feature requests on their Discord server but the team admitted they read every single comment and request, even if it had little upvotes. They watched countless steamers play the game during Early Access and closely examined their reactions. Of course, the team also had access to large amounts of anonymous player data that would tell them things like what weapons players would beat the game with for the first time, or where they would get stuck. Knowing when to stop tweaking a certain feature can be a tricky thing during development, but Greg mentioned in an interview with PC Gamer that “As soon as there’s no more feedback on a thing, it’s hands off.”

As the team was getting closer to the 1.0 release, or the finished version of the game in other words, they started preparations for porting the game to other systems. A Steam version had already been in the works for quite some time, seeing that they added Early Access on Valve’s storefront in December 2019. However, getting Hades to work on consoles was looking to be quite the challenge for the small indie studio and this mostly came down to their engine.

Supergiant Games has been using the same custom c# engine since their first title, Bastion, and began developing Hades on that very same engine. Unfortunately, the engine always made it difficult for the team to port their games so midway through Hades’ development, they decided to rewrite their engine using native C. This resulted in higher performance and made it easier to port games in general. The developers joked it was a very unglamourous job for the engineers where the end result is exactly the same for the players. On top of that, it caused a lot of visual glitches, as well as exotic crashes that took lots of effort to iron out.

In September 2020, the completed version of Hades for Windows, MacOS and Switch was released to much critical acclaim. Pretty much every single aspect of the game received praise and even people that generally don’t like roguelikes, ended up enjoying Hades for its rich worldbuilding, characters and addictive combat. Furthermore, it sold 700,000 copies during its Early Access phase and within three days of its full release, that number reached over 1 million copies. 

It was no surprise when Hades was nominated for a bunch of awards in 2020 and 2021, but it was truly impressive and well deserved just how many awards it was able to take home. Several of them were even Game of the Year awards. Supergiant Games couldn’t have imagined a better success story for their first attempt at a roguelike game. Now that the game is out on PlayStation and Xbox as well, Hades’ success is bound to grow even bigger.

Aside from all the success Hades has had, the developers are just very grateful to have had the chance to work closely with their fans and build something very special, together. It was the perfect opportunity for them to take all the lessons they learned over the years working on Bastion, Transistor and Pyre and piece them together in a new way. Supergiant Games has certainly become a staple in the industry and it’s probably safe to say that their next title will be looked at closely with great anticipation.