Hades heads onto Steam, no longer Epic exclusive
Hell breezes over
Good news, Epic Store renouncers. You can now play Supergiant's latest game without getting your fingers dirty, as Hades has landed on Steam and is no longer exclusive to Epic. The Hellenic action roguelike is still in early access, but it's also still really good. It's plenty polished, with swords that wallop and dodges that delight. I've played for dozens of hours already, and haven't yet checked out all the new stuff in last week's big update.
It's good at making each run distinct. Each of the five weapons come with their own attacks and strategies, further adapted by the gods you meet during your escape attempts. They grant you boons that build on each other, like Artemis adding a homing affect to the summonable saw blades bestowed on you by Ares, the god of War. Abilities pile up nicely, never taking quite the same path. One run might be dominated by damage buffs to in-your-face ranged attacks, another by dashes and well-timed deflections. It's varied, even though Supergiant are far from finished.
They're planning on leaving early access in "the second part of 2020", once they're done adding story bits. The main areas are all in, with a proper ending and "finishing touches across all aspects of the game" still to be done.
If you'd rather wait, that is a perfectly valid choice. But Supergiant have cleverly folded incompleteness into the story, and I've enjoyed seeing characters react to new developments. When I last played Sisyphus let me chat to his boulder, though I was sad I couldn't give it any of the friendship sand you can hand to actual deities. Hades oozes all the charm you'd expect from a Supergiant game, and packs even better combat.
It's on Steam for £15.50/$20/€17. You can still get in on the Epic Store, too.