The surprise release of 'Hades II' shakes up the video game calendar

In times of huge blockbusters in the video game industry, it is the smaller studios that are marking the calendar with the most unexpected announcements, as has already happened with the recent Hollow Knight: SilksongIn fact, the announcement was so surprising that it does not appear in the monthly agenda. Without any major prior promotional campaign, Supergiant Games has confirmed that Hades II Arrives on September 25, 2025, in its full version on PC and both Switch consoles. However, the game is being released in this 1.0 version after spending just over a year in Early Access on the Steam desktop platform. Early Access is a kind of beta phase for a game, with developers working on it while players already have access, so their feedback helps refine the game during development.

Far from being an exception, this release reinforces the strong momentum the indie sector is experiencing. Hades II, along with other titles from 2025 such as the aforementioned Silksong either Dark Clair: Expedition 33, shows that the independent scene is now capable of competing with major productions. With small teams and modest budgets, these studios have managed to turn creativity and narrative freedom into their greatest assets. Supergiant, founded in San Francisco in 2009, has grown faithful to this philosophy and has managed to make each of its projects perceived as an auteur work, although none was as transcendental as Hades (2020).

Supergiant's first sequel

The phenomenon that it represented Hades explains much of the excitement surrounding its sequel. The title not only helped redefine the subgenre roguelike, based on the repetition of a cycle and the randomness of scenarios and rewards, but also demonstrated that a rich narrative could be articulated from the player's failures. Each death of Zagreus, the son of Hades who wants to escape the world of the dead, became a new opportunity to delve deeper into his family ties and discover new mysteries of the Greek pantheon. The result was an unprecedented critical and popular success for an independent studio: international awards, recognition for best game of the year, and a loyal player base that continues to this day. Supergiante, which had never repeated a narrative universe, found in the Greek underworld a goldmine of stories that made it inevitable to conceive a sequel.

In this sequel, the focus falls on Melinoë, an immortal witch who happens to be Zagreus's sister. Well-equipped with dark weapons and magical arts, her adventure leads the player to confront Cronus, the Titan of Time, who escapes from captivity to challenge the gods. This choice is no coincidence, as the studio aims to delve deeper into the connection between Greek mythology and witchcraft. It also justifies the prominent presence of Hecate, goddess of spells, witchcraft, and hidden paths.

As with the first game, the studio remains faithful to the classical sources that inspire the projects, from Homer to Hesiod. They also believe that mythological stories live on because they are retold again and again, and are adapted and filtered through new points of view over time. Similarly, the new offering retains the gameplay foundation that made the first game great: fast-paced, intense combat, ever-changing environments, vivid art, and a plot that unfolds with each progress or death. But the studio assures that Hades II It spans a much larger scale, promising greater variety, depth, and strategic options to customize the player's experience.

A repeating cycle

The studio maintains the formula that worked for them with the first one Hades, with an early access period that has allowed them to polish the game with the help of the community, and an initial release only for PC and Switch. In fact, it has not yet been confirmed, but everything indicates that its sequel will also end up arriving sooner or later on Microsoft and Sony consoles, so players on these platforms who want to play Hades II They'll have to be patient. What's more, those who prefer physical versions of the games will have to wait until November 20th, when the cartridges for Switch and Switch 2 will go on sale.

The Supergiant Games team, which debuted with Bastion (2011) with only seven members, has grown and become a team of about 25 people with a more ambitious project than ever. The studio faces the challenge of demonstrating that Hades II can repeat, and even surpass, the feat of its predecessor. If Zagreus captivated millions of players around the world, now it's Melinoë's turn to showcase the darker, more mysterious side of Greek mythology.