Hades (2020)
Hades is a 2020 role-playing (rpg) video game made by Supergiant Games and Netflix.
Zagreus, restless son of the god of the dead, wants out of the family home, which happens to be Hell. So he fights his way up through the shifting halls of the underworld, room by room, dying often and starting over, gathering boons from Olympian relatives who keep meddling from above. Supergiant's action roguelike turns each failed escape into progress, with new weapons, upgrades, and a fresh round of sharp, flirtatious banter from a cast of gods, shades, and monsters who all seem to know exactly what he is up to.
Quick answers
What is Hades about?
Zagreus, restless son of the god of the dead, wants out of the family home, which happens to be Hell. So he fights his way up through the shifting halls of the underworld, room by room, dying often and starting over, gathering boons from Olympian relatives who keep meddling from above. Supergiant's action roguelike turns each failed escape into progress, with new weapons, upgrades, and a fresh round of sharp, flirtatious banter from a cast of gods, shades, and monsters who all seem to know exactly what he is up to.
When was Hades released?
Hades was released on 17 September 2020.
Who made Hades?
Hades was made by Supergiant Games and Netflix.
Similar games
Explore Hades guides
Hades in our writing
- Companion guide: Ancient Greece
- Companion guide: Deals with the Devil
- Companion guide: Greek Mythology
- Companion guide: Heaven, Hell & the Afterlife
A few thoughts on Hades
For more Greek gods dropped into a lively story, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief sends a teenager into the same pantheon of squabbling immortals, quests and all. And Tomorrow works the underworld angle from a different culture, following grim reapers who deal with the living and the nearly departed. Both share Hades' mix of myth and personality.
Greek myth and the underworld, retold
Hades sends Zagreus climbing out of the Greek underworld while Olympian relatives meddle from above, and it plainly loves the source material. These retell the same myths across games and TV: gods, reapers, and heroes drawn from Greek and afterlife lore, some faithful and grand, some cheeky and modern, all playing in the pantheon Hades treats like a chaotic family.
Action-RPGs you keep playing for the characters
Half of Hades is the flirtatious, sharply written banter from the gods and shades you meet between runs. These action-RPGs put the same weight on their casts: companions and relationships you actually care about, dialogue with real wit and heat, and worlds where the people are as much the draw as the fighting.
Games built around mastering their own systems
Hades turns every failed escape into progress, teaching you its weapons, boons, and enemies until a run finally clicks. These reward the same kind of learning: games with tight, legible systems you slowly master, where a level or a fight that felt impossible becomes second nature once you understand exactly how it works.
Deep RPG worlds to sink dozens of hours into
If Hades left you wanting a bigger world to build a character in, these hand you room to roam. They trade the roguelike loop for sprawling maps and long quests, but keep the RPG pull of steady upgrades and choices that stack up, the sort of games you happily lose a weekend inside the way Zagreus loses run after run.