Players control Zagreus, the son of Hades, as he attempts to escape from the Underworld to reach Mount Olympus, at times aided by boons the other Olympians bestow on him.

Hades has been cited among the greatest video games of all time, with critics praising its narrative, gameplay, art style, music, and voice acting.

The player controls Zagreus, the prince of the Underworld, who seeks to escape the realm to get away from his unloving father, Hades, and reach his mother Persephone in the mortal world.

Along his quest, the other Olympians support him, granting him gifts called Boons to help him fight the beings that guard the exit to the Underworld.

The player starts a run by fighting through several rooms drawn from a pool of pre-determined layouts, with the order they appear in and the enemies that appear being randomized.

However, if Zagreus' health points drop to zero while he has no "death defiance" tokens left, he is defeated and taken by the river Styx back to the House of Hades, which effectively acts as the game's overworld between attempts.

After defeating Hades at least once, the player can manually customize and increase the difficulty of the gameplay by using the Pact of Punishment, allowing them to add extra challenges or modify aspects of the game.

Zagreus (Darren Korb), the son and Firstborn of Hades (Logan Cunningham), seeks to escape his father's realm in the Underworld.

It is eventually revealed that Zagreus wishes to escape the Underworld to find Persephone (Laila Berzins), his biological mother, whom he never knew due to being told that he was the child of Nyx.

Over the course of these visits, it is revealed that Zeus (Peter Canavese) "gave" Persephone to Hades as a reward for ruling over the Underworld, with the other Olympians believing that she simply disappeared.

Zagreus eventually convinces her to return after reminding her of the bonds of family, and Charon (Logan Cunningham) ferries them to the House of Hades.

[6] The roguelike approach also fit well with their past gameplay design goals, where they aimed to continue to add in new tricks or tools for the player that would make them reconsider how they have been playing the game to that point.

With Hades established as a roguelike, the team felt the branching narrative approach would be much more appropriate since the genre calls for players to repeatedly play through the game.

This discovery led Kasavin towards having the game centered on Zagreus attempting to escape from Hades and the Underworld as a more interesting narrative approach.

[8] Kasavin compared the gods as "a big dysfunctional family that we can see ourselves in", and that by having Zagreus repeatedly try and fail to escape from Hades, it would provide both the type of slapstick comedy that he felt captured the relationships in this "family", as well as the player experience typically associated with roguelikes where one moment the player may feel invincible only to be quickly defeated and brought back to the start the next moment.

Kasavin and his writers drafted out about ten hours' worth of dialog between Zagreus and the non-player characters based on a large number of potential chained events that could happen to the player.

[13] According to Geoff Keighley, the host and organizer of the Game Awards show, Supergiant's Amir Rao and Greg Kasavin approached him at the 2018 D.I.C.E.

"[38] The Guardian liked art director Jen Zee's work on the game, particularly her portraits of the characters, calling them "wonderfully drawn" and "with appropriate godlike profiles.

[40] Suriel Vazquez, writing for GameSpot felt that the worldbuilding complimented "a robust postgame that... offers even more reasons to play an already entrancing mix of RPG and action combat".

[54] Several publications considered it one of the best video games of 2020, including Polygon,[55] Giant Bomb,[56] IGN,[57] USGamer,[58] Destructoid,[59] Time,[60] The Washington Post,[61] Slant Magazine,[62] and Entertainment Weekly.

[69] In a review of Hades in Black Gate, John ONeill said of its Hugo Award win, "I hope the WSFS decides to continue this category.

Video games have become a solid reservoir for powerful storytelling, and 16 years after Roger Ebert infamously said that they will never be art, the craftsmen behind the industry have proven him wrong.

[83] Its protagonist is Melinoë, the Princess of the Underworld and sister of Zagreus, who seeks to defeat Chronos, the Titan of Time, with help from Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, and other Olympian gods and figures.

[84] Besides similar melee combat moves from the first game, Melinoë has access to spells that consume mana, and can collect ingredients while traversing the Underworld to craft boons and other gear at special rooms.