Hades II: How Supergiant Made Its First Sequel Worth the Wait
A studio that never made sequels spent four and a half years on one, half of it in public. The result scored 94 on Metacritic and took Best Action at The Game Awards. Inside the making of Hades II.
For fifteen years, Supergiant Games had one rule nobody wrote down: never make the same game twice. Bastion was a storybook action game. Transistor was a sci-fi tactics thriller. Pyre was a fantasy sports drama. Hades was a roguelike about escaping the Greek underworld. Then Hades became the studio's biggest hit, and the San Francisco team broke its own habit.
Hades II left early access and launched its 1.0 version on 25 September 2025 on PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. It arrived on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on 14 April 2026, including Xbox Game Pass. Critics gave it a Metacritic score of 94 on PC, 98% of critics on OpenCritic recommend it, and at The Game Awards 2025 it won Best Action Game among six nominations, including Game of the Year.
A studio that doesn't do sequels
Supergiant was founded in 2009 and has stayed independent ever since. It is small by modern standards and famous for an unusually steady creative team: director Greg Kasavin, art director Jen Zee and composer Darren Korb have shaped the look and sound of every game.
Hades II is the studio's first sequel. In interviews the team pointed to Portal 2 and Diablo II as the kind of follow-ups it admired: sequels that keep what people loved but feel bigger, stranger and more confident. That is a high bar, and it explains why Supergiant took its time.
Building in public
Supergiant announced Hades II at The Game Awards on 8 December 2022. A technical test followed in April 2024, and the game opened in early access on PC in May 2024. (Early access means paying to play a game before it is finished, while the developers keep adding content and fixing problems based on feedback.)
The first Hades had also grown up in early access, so this was familiar ground. Over roughly eighteen months the team shipped big content updates, including The Olympic Update in October 2024, which also brought the game to macOS. By the time 1.0 arrived, total development had stretched to about four and a half years.
The 1.0 launch added the thing early-access players had been waiting for: a true ending. It also brought new events for the game's dozens of fully voiced characters, new music, new prophecies in the Fated List and late-game unlockables.
Meet Melinoë
Where the first game starred Zagreus, a prince trying to escape his father's house, Hades II flips the direction. You play Melinoë, Princess of the Underworld and Zagreus's sister. Chronos, the Titan of Time, has returned, seized the Underworld and imprisoned her family. Melinoë, trained by the witch goddess Hecate, has to fight her way to him and stop him for good.
Instead of escaping upward, she battles both down through the Underworld and up toward Olympus. The combat leans into witchcraft: casting circles, channelled spells and weapons with distinct personalities. As in the first game, each failed run sends you home with resources, story scenes and new conversations, so dying is part of the fun rather than a punishment.
The voice cast includes Judy Alice Lee as Melinoë, Amelia Tyler as Hecate, Asa Butterfield as Icarus and Logan Cunningham as Hades, Chronos and several others.
The sound of the Underworld
Ask any Hades fan what they remember first and many will hum a song. Darren Korb writes, produces and often sings Supergiant's music, and for Hades II he went bigger than ever. The official soundtrack runs just under four hours, the longest in the studio's history, mixing heavy guitar, folk instruments and vocal duets that work as story moments in their own right.
The music is not just background. In a game where you replay the same regions dozens of times, a great track is what keeps the hundredth run from feeling like the first. It is also a family business of sorts: Korb has scored every Supergiant game since Bastion, so long-time fans can hear the studio's history in the arrangements. Supergiant sells the soundtrack on Steam and Bandcamp and streams it on YouTube and the major music services, and for many players it became the way to keep the game with them on the commute.
The ending debate
Hades II was not universally loved in every detail. Some critics and players found the true ending underwhelming after so long a build-up. Supergiant responded the way it handled early access: it listened. Later updates added extra scenes and an option to return to the state of the game before the conclusion, so players could keep living in the world.
It is a small detail, but a telling one. Supergiant treats a launch less like a finish line and more like the next checkpoint.
By the numbers
- 2009: Supergiant Games founded in San Francisco
- 8 December 2022: Hades II revealed at The Game Awards
- May 2024: early access opens on PC
- 25 September 2025: version 1.0 on PC, Switch and Switch 2
- 20 November 2025: physical edition released
- 14 April 2026: PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, plus Game Pass
- 94: Metacritic score on PC
- 96%: positive share of more than 66,000 English Steam reviews
- Nearly 4 hours: length of Darren Korb's soundtrack, the studio's biggest yet
Why it caught fire
Three things made Hades II a breakout rather than just a solid sequel.
The early-access loop. Every update was an event. Streamers returned, lapsed players came back, and the game stayed in the conversation for a year and a half before its "real" launch.
Nintendo timing. Launching 1.0 on Switch 2 as a console exclusive put the game in front of a fresh audience hungry for great portable games, months before PlayStation and Xbox players could buy it.
Craft you can feel. Supergiant's games look, sound and read like the work of a team that has stayed together for fifteen years. Korb's songs, Zee's character art and Kasavin's writing make even a short run feel authored. In a market flooded with roguelikes, that polish is the difference.
What to play next
If you have not played the first Hades, it still holds up beautifully and sets up Melinoë's family drama. If you want the opposite mood from the same year, try Hollow Knight: Silksong, another long-awaited indie sequel that turned patience into a phenomenon (our Silksong feature). And for a co-op adventure with none of the combat, see how the makers of Untitled Goose Game went for a walk (Big Walk).
WGC's take: Hades II shows the value of a stable, independent team. Supergiant did not chase trends or rush a sequel to cash in. It waited until it had something new to say, built it in front of its players and finished it properly. That is rarer than it should be.