Nintendo unveiled its Switch 2 hybrid game console in New York yesterday, and it brought along a number of game developers who made games for the platform. One of the games on display was Supergiant Games’ Hades II, which has been in the works for four years.
I spoke with Greg Kasavin, creative director of Supergiant Games, at the event about how the company made the game for both the Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo Switch 2. The work began in 2021, after Supergiant shipped Hades for the Switch in 2020. The company shipped its Windows title in early access in May 2024 on Windows and it did the same for early access in October 2024 for the MacOS.
Now it’s readying the title for its Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo Switch 2. I played the game and the gameplay was pretty smooth, with fairly speedy 2.5D action.
Hades II features Melinoe, the sister of the original game’s hero Zagreus. She is in conflict with the Titan Chronos (her grandfather). She tangles with Olympian gods from the first game — Zeus, Poseidon, Artemis and Aphrodite. She also has to deal with new gods in the game like god blacksmith Hephaestus, sun god Apollo, moon goddess Selene and Hecate. Melinoe has the ability to tame animals and bring down the power of the moon on her enemies.
Supergiant was happy with how the Switch version turned out in 2020, Kasavin said, as the game found a big and enthusiastic audience.
For the sequel, the company wanted it to run well on the original Switch. At the time they started, they didn’t know anything about the Switch 2, Kasavin said.
“When we learned of the Switch 2, we were able to get the game up and running on that platform pretty quickly because of the groundwork we had already laid,” Kasavin said. “It was great for us to have this bigger and brighter screen.”
The dev team took advantage of the additional hardware headroom to add effects while still supporting the original platform. The team explored the new Joy-Con game controller for the Switch 2, as it serves as a mouse. But the team decided to bypass the mouse capability.
“We want people to be able to pick up and play this game with just the most basic understanding of how controllers work,” Kasavin said.
The game runs at 720p on the original Switch, but it can do 1080p resolution on the new hardware in terms of running Hades II. This wasn’t hard to do because the team was making the game to support a wide range of resolutions on modern PCs. The target is to get the game to run at 60 frames per second on both the Switch and the Switch 2. The 120 FPS capability was a surprise to Kasavin, and so the team hasn’t figured out yet if it can hit that spec. That’s the nature of hardware design — it’s a moving target.
As for the four years, that’s about the same time it took to make the original Hades. The new game will likely take longer to make, Kasavin said.
“This is simply a bigger game,” he said. “It’s really important for us to find a development pace that we can sustain over over time it’s a marathon, not a sprint, type of mentality. Our team has been together for more than 15 years now, and our goal has always been to stick together as long as we can and keep going for as long as we can. So that means making sure we can give our games as much time as we think they need to end up at the standard that that we want them to be. Hades II is the biggest game we’ve ever made. Most of the longer development time is just a function of that.”
Hades II doesn’t yet have a launch date. There’s still at least one more early access mode to hit. But Kasavin said the game will sell for a low price because the company believes in giving good value for players.
“The original game of Hades turned out as well as it did because of early access development, and it’s hugely important to this sequel as well,” Kasavin said. “We’re just really grateful for everyone’s excitement for the original game, and for the early access of this game. It’s it helps keep us going.”
Disclosure: Nintendo paid my way to New York.
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