Supergiant Games, the studio behind Bastion, Transistor and, most recently, Pyre, announced a new game called Hades. The title is a hack-and-slash game of epic proportions, as players control the son of Hades, fighting through the underworld to get his freedom.
The game’s official description describes Hades as a “rogue-like dungeon crawler” and players get a glimpse of that in the gorgeous and fast-paced announcement trailer. After Hades’ son dies at the hands of the game’s overwhelming enemies, he respawns, dusts himself off, and is ready to go again. The player character can also be seen interacting with Zeus in order to unlock new abilities.
It’s early days for the Epic Games Store but the fact that it allows early access games and titles still in development could be a good thing for both developers and players. For developers, it allows them to get the financial support and feedback that they need to make their games great as they get towards them the finish line. Meanwhile, gamers burned by Steam and the notoriously poor quality of some of its early access releases have been looking for an alternative. If Epic Games is more selective with the games it allows into its early access program, it could give players more confidence about the games that they’re buying.
The partnership with Supergiant Games is likely to be the first of many partnerships that Epic Games strikes up with developers. Whether that leads to total storefront exclusives, like the way that Fortnite Android is only on the Epic Launcher and not the Google Play store, or just timed exclusive offers, is unclear. However, it will be interesting to see how this shakes up the PC gaming market.
Hades is now available on PC.
