One of the best roguelike games of the past decade, Hades, was revealed to have a sequel in the works back in December 2022, with early access news coming in 2023. After today’s announcement, we know when the process will kick up again for Hades II.
Hades II’s early access is set to launch in quarter two of 2024, meaning that players will get their hands on Supergiant Games’ first sequel in between the months of April and June 2024. The game’s early access version will be available on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
For fans of the original Hades, this all might seem very familiar. The original game was released in early access form way back in December 2018, as the developers added more and more until the game was complete. It wasn’t a short time either, as the official 1.0 version of the game came out in September 2020, almost two full years after the early access release.
While early access can be developers releasing an unfinished game to try and rake early profits, Hades stood out as being a well-designed game from the start, especially in its early gameplay. Aspects of the game like bug fixes and added content both inside and outside of the core hack-and-slash style were inserted over time until that full release.
While the gameplay itself is very similar to other games in Supergiant Games’ catalog, most notably Transistor, the procedurally generated rooms were very much a hearkening back to games like The Binding of Isaac and Slay the Spire. Then, the story of Hades was designed around players losing a run, going to a hub and learning more about the story, before needing to complete more runs to piece together the whole thing. This made the game addictive in nature, both in how the gameplay was constantly changing, but also how you progressed in learning more of Zagreus’ backstory and goals, all set in well-adapted Greek mythology.
Hades II will have a lot of overlap with both its timeframe of release and its gameplay and story elements. This time players are going to play as a new royal member of the Underworld, the princess Melinoë, trying to defeat the titan of time, Chronos. The idea of having an enemy focused on time as the villain of the sequel is a bit funny, if intentional, but both the way Hades II will be released and what it contains will give avid fans of the franchise a bit of déjà vu.
The release timeframe isn’t set in stone, with the devs themselves stating that they “don’t yet know exactly how long it will take us to get to v1.0 of Hades II, as our experience developing in Early Access has taught us (among many things) to expect the unexpected.” Alas, that experience will also give fans access to Hades II earlier than expected, even if it needs to be built up over time like the original did.
