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I've finally started playing HADES by Supergiant Games. I've long been a fan of Supergiant's work; Bastion wowed me with its dynamic narration, sense of humor, gorgeous art, and killer soundtrack. Transistor raised the stakes, knocking me out with the combination of cyberpunk and art deco designs and ideas, just completely absorbing me into its stylishness. Sadly, I have not yet gotten around to playing Pyre, but their latest game has tempted me since it started in early access. Innovative riffs on the Greek Gods (a particular weakness of mine second only to the ancient Egyptian pantheon), narrative justification for a roguelike's typical cycle of try-die-try-again. Since I worked in games, I've been incredibly burnt out on them. While in that field and for quite some time after, I found myself unable to enjoy my favorite hobby as a player. I could never extricate myself completely from the world of videogames, but my experience of them was limited to watching other people play, whether that was my wife or a favorite youtuber. Since my wife is not fond of isometric dungeon crawlers, my ability to dive into the world of HADES has been very limited.

So consider my great joy that I have started to return to playing games for fun! I fully thank the Nintendo Switch for this, as it has made some old favorites extremely accessible to me, allowing me to dip my toes back in with familiar experiences like Star Wars Podracer. Even better, this past weekend I finally took the dive into HADES. The art, music, and emergent, HEAVILY tied-into-the-gameplay narrative have me completely hooked. I, for the first time in years, am really looking forward to jumping into a new game over and over again, and it even tickled the game designer in me to realize that the very first enemy types you meet in the game... are essentially reskins of the first core enemies of Bastion. This kind of mechanical callback, reaching back to Supergiant's first game, and reaching back to a time where everything about games was fresh and exciting for me, awoke something in me. And so now, even though I'm tired from a long day of work, and would normally be settling in to watch something I've already seen and doomscroll through twitter, am instead going to boot up my switch and plunge once more in the depths of Tartarus... and then maybe one more... and maybe one more after that.....