Hades: 10 Reasons You MUST Play Supergiant's New Rogue-Like

Though it's been in early access for a while, only recently has indie developer Supergiant Games officially released its immensely masterful and increasingly popular rogue-like dungeon crawler, Hades.

With the full release is an animated trailer that turns heads with fantastic, high-energy, and surprisingly seductive visuals - lovingly animated by the accidentally-established Studio Grackle under the out and proud Spencer Wan - that give a fairly accurate sense of what the game itself plays like.

Lined up for many awards and winning them as it goes, Supergiant Games shows what indie developers with vision can do, able to put out a game that's one of the best of 2020, a year of fairly strong titles in itself. It also happens to be one of the best examples of how early access can make a game stronger, instead of using it as a cheap ploy to earn cash off a buggy, unfinished design.

Supergiant itself revealed its intent to use early access to get feedback from the passionate and skilful community of players and speed-runners, and the work they've been doing since their beta release has paid off in a game that can only gain more acclaim as time goes on.

There are many reasons even those not active in the gaming community are turning their attention to Hades - and here are ten of them to get you started if you haven't already. Minor spoilers ahead for some in-game content!

For someone who's never played a dungeon crawler or rogue-like, Hades is the perfect stepping stone, being both a fantastic representation of the genre while allowing people who are there for the story to have an easier time progressing.

It's hard for many games to balance being challenging enough for seasoned players to gain satisfaction from the experience but easy enough to get into for newbies to enjoy without getting frustrated or giving up. Hades, while lacking the usual "easy, normal, hard" game leveling or some variation thereof, still achieves ease of access through the "god-mode" option, which allows casual players, and those only there for the story, to progress.

God-mode ups the player's damage resistance with every death, which may at first sound like it's not much help at all, until you realise plot progresses and unlocks new story beats and dialogue with every new and different death, even furthering certain relationships within the game.

Dying is a way by which the story develops - apart from finishing a run - so having both be rewarding, even if you're not used to the rogue-like experience, is the ingenious way Supergiant helps even new players get in on the action.