Over nine hours, I’ve tried to escape from Hades a dozen times, but my last attempt was easily the most heartbreaking. I had acquired my best build yet and made it to Elysium with three extra lives in tow. I was on top of the underworld. But then came the Soul Catchers, and their hordes of buffeting butterflies. My luck ran out and my confidence unravelled, as I burned all of Zagreus’ extra lives across two measly rooms.
It was a valiant effort when I stumbled into the boss door, but as per usual, I got my cheeks smacked by professional jobsworth Theseus and his endearing (if not slightly bullish) partner. Ultimately, there’s no one to blame but myself as, mechanically, the video game Hades is a peach.
If only I’d worked out the kinks in my own head and kept my reflexes in check, I probably could have toppled my nemesis. But it wasn’t meant to be. I’d lost my nerve. So, as usual, I was dragged back to the marble waiting room to deal with the jeers and jabs of my deadbeat dad.
Beyond some crass jokes from the God Of Death, Hades isn’t really in the business of making you feel bad about failure. Instead, Supergiant Games has systems in place that carefully impart a very mindful moral: There’s value in every defeat.
Now don’t get me wrong, that is the modus operandi of most roguelike games. They’re designed to nurture persistence, but none that I’ve played achieve that goal quite like . Other games in the genre usually make capital their god, with arbitrary upgrades to look forward to, urging players to try again so they can earn more resources and feed the machine. It creates this very fast feedback loop, where you’re hammering the button to restart out of pure frustration, dooming your next attempt as you regress into a tilted downward spiral.
