By that, I mean Hades, the indie darling of 2020.
It's the game everybody talked about last year besides ACNH and TLOU2 and CP77 and FF7R. If you don't know what those acronyms stand for, no worries, I don't recommend getting deeper into video games because you might not get your life back.
Busy-mom preamble
Before I get to the "hell" part of this headline, I'd like to explain why I had a "relaxing afternoon."
I don't think I've had a whole afternoon of recreation to myself since Miss S was born. If I have, it's been wiped out of memory by that condition known as mommy brain.
If I have the luxury of being alone and uninterrupted during daytime hours, the time is usually meant for work and errands. Gaming in the day is something I rarely do despite a flexible, stay-at-home situation. Miss S does not tolerate laptops or permit prolonged attention to handheld devices.
So it's possible that I've gone more than a year without a "relaxing afternoon," in which one simply relaxes, as opposed to working in a relaxed manner. It's a shocking thought. Three cheers, therefore, to Miss S's daddy who took her away for a long outing!
I spent a chunk of my precious alone-time in the underworld.
Loving Hades
Hades is brilliant. But you don't need to hear it from me. Just about every review out there will tell you why. So I'll settle for telling you one little detail I love about the game.
It's Dusa! Yes, a chibi-fied, kawaii-fied version of Medusa. (Note: The Japanese word chibi is not something you want to fling around in Japan. According to my middle-aged Japanese tutor, the word is kind of insulting, though you could use it to talk about your grandbabies affectionately. Read more about it on Tofugu.)
I'm so tickled by the way Dusa scuttles off and disappears into the ceiling. She's the least Hades-like character so far, practically displaced from some anime into the wrong universe. I might find her annoying in an anime, but her nervousness makes her endearing here.
Back to the big picture: I don't love hack-and-slash games, but Hades has made me enjoy one. I'm terrible at real-time combat, so it took me 1.5 hours to reach the first boss. Beating this boss took three attempts. That was after Miss S's daddy advised me to "be patient and keep your distance." In total, I spent 4 hours finishing the first area, Tartarus.
On hindsight, Tartarus seems so easy now compared to Asphodel, where lava and new enemies are kicking my butt. Despite the crazy flurry of action, it's not stressful. Rather, it's stress-relieving to have a punching bag in hell (with nice story bits and super cool art in between).
I'd be worse at the game if I hadn't played Bastion, Supergiant Games' first title. Combat in Hades has a similar feel but is way smoother than Bastion's.
The evolution of Supergiant games
After playing Bastion and Transistor, it's hard not to notice similarities to Hades and a certain Supergiant style. This makes me so keen to check out Pyre as well. I want to see how all four Supergiant titles might fit in an evolution of design.
I'm looking for interviews that address this: How have Supergiant Games evolved, building upon each game or taking new directions?
Here's one interview by AllGamers, though it only deals briefly with my question. Writer/designer Greg Kasavin says this:
I think Hades incorporates a lot of the best ideas from each of our previous games, and we've really learned a lot working together over the years. Hades has the immediacy and accessibility of Bastion, a game you can quickly pick up and start playing.
It has the gameplay depth and variety of Transistor, with a combat system where you can create thousands of different character ‘builds' from one play-through to the next, creating significant variety. It has the large cast of colorful characters and forward-moving narrative structure of Pyre, making this a game where the story isn’t strictly locked behind your progress, and you can get to know the characters the more you play.
Another Supergiant interview
I also came across an Escapist interview that was a fun read. Neither the AllGamers nor the Escapist interviews are very recent (2019), and many questions deal with Hades' Early Access which is now old news. But both interviews had good questions and informative answers.
Here's what Greg Kasavin told Escapist about the choice of protagonist:
Many of the characters are essentially original, anyway, in that the canon mythology provides very little to go on, other than a very compelling idea. Our protagonist character, Zagreus, best represents this. We know almost nothing about him from the source mythology, other than maybe he’s a son of Hades, or maybe he’s even an early version of Dionysus. The idea that Hades, god of the death, might have secretly had a son was so compelling, we decided to make it the premise of the whole game.
The choice of a little-known character within an expansive lore reminds me of Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales. Like Zagreus in Greek mythology, Queen Meve is a minor character in the Witcher universe with just enough canonical history to give writers a general direction for creative expansion. I'm thinking of writing a post on Meve some day.
But first, I might get serious about trying Pyre and comparing the Supergiant games.
Meanwhile, if you enjoyed any of their games, keep sending this developer your love! Kasavin says:
. . . the kind words of support we get from players really means a lot. While I was working on Pyre, for instance, it was the love I saw for our past games that helped me push myself to do my best.
A good reminder that everyone needs encouragement, even people with many successes under their belt.