The roguelike structure of Hades gave them the opportunity to tell these branching stories to the player over the course of multiple runs. Hades was developed following Supergiant's Pyre, a game in which they wanted to explore procedural narrative storytelling, but due to the nature of the main gameplay, found that players did not play through Pyre multiple times to explore this.

While Zagreus will often die, the player can use gained treasure to improve certain attributes or unlock new weapons and abilities to improve chances of escaping on subsequent runs. The game has a hack and slash combat system the player uses a combination of their main weapon attack, dash power, and magic ability to defeat them while avoiding damage to progress as far as possible. Each run challenges the player through a random series of rooms populated with enemies and rewards. Players control Zagreus, the son of Hades, as he attempts to escape from Underworld to reach Mount Olympus, at times aided by gifts bestowed on him from the other Olympians. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Nintendo Switch on September 17, 2020, which followed an early access release from December 2018.

Hades is a roguelike action role-playing video game developed and published by Supergiant Games.

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