In the Name of Hades…
I’ve been obsessed with Hades, Supergiant Games’ incredible roguelike, since it came out in early access. By the time the game actually launched in 2018, I had 300+ hours on the game and was done with the story, but I was still playing. I still am. Two years later, Hades is still installed, and Steam tells me I’ve clocked an additional 200 hours of play in that time. I played it yesterday. It’s not like I have a problem, I can stop at any time, I just don’t want to.
Supergiant has always had a way of getting in my head, but I didn’t get addicted to any of their games until this one. Bastion was beautiful, and compelling, and too hard for me. I don’t generally play the kind of twitchy combat-focused game that requires muscle memory and reflexes, because of my PTSD - my hands shake, and my body doesn’t generally respond fast or reliably enough to handle most mechanically-demanding experiences. The absurdist in me likes a game that aggressively wants me dead, but I usually need it to be turn-based; give me time to respond to my oncoming doom, or at least a good long few minutes to contemplate how impressively screwed I am.
But when I heard that Supergiant, who at the time I had filed in my head under “Stunningly beautiful art, music, and narrative, pretty colors, gameplay innovative but not always free of jank,” was making a roguelike… well, I lost my shit, not to put too fine a point on it. Roguelikes are my jam, because they liberate the cautious, resource-hoarding part of my little perfectionist brain, the part that makes me end a game with an inventory full of unused potions and spells because “but what if I need them more LATER?” Roguelikes make death part of the progression experience, and that makes me willing to take risks and spend my resources to do better, knowing that failure isn’t, strictly speaking, always a failure.
It was my favorite type of game, made by one of my favorite developers, but one that I normally associate more with gorgeous art than with that kind of, for lack of a better term, hardcore gameplay. Of course I jumped in immediately. Of course I then promptly sank to the bottom and never returned. And because this is NOT a review of Hades, I’m gonna link you to my actual love letter to the game and assume after this point that you’ve got the basics - it’s a game, Zagreus is your player character, and your home base is the lavish House of Hades in Tartarus. And I remain so obsessed with this game, two years after launch, that I decided I needed a miniature version of the bedroom Zag passes through every time he heads out to patrol the Hells.
I could talk endlessly about this project, but there’s a strictly limited amount of artist shop-talk most people can absorb, and I put most of that stuff in the weekly newsletter (which you can sign up for here if you’d like to see in-progress pictures of this kind of work). We learned a great deal, and I’m pleased enough with the final product that the woefully optimistic part of my brain is now like, “WE SHOULD DO THE WHOLE HOUSE.” If the room sparks a lot of interest, it might happen. This took us almost exactly two months, with some Life-Stuff interruptions along the way, so I imagine we could bang out the entire House of Hades in four or five, max.
Specs and dimensions:
All models were custom-made by Elder Viki Winter, and you can see some of them in their pre-printed state on her Instagram.
Printed on the Elegoo Saturn out of Photopolymer Resin - this is an MSLA printer, which means it’s using UV light to cure liquid resin, so it doesn’t have the striations you might have seen on models made with filament printers.
Hand-painted in acrylic, primarily with Games Workshop and Vallejo paints and varnish, assembled with superglue.
L: 20cm W: 10cm H: 6.5cm
8.8 ounces or 250 grams, because I felt like weighing it, so it’s about half a pound - heavier than it looks!
