Hades II developers explain why making a sequel was not the obvious business decision

Supergiant Games says making Hades II was not simply the obvious commercial choice after the success of the original Hades. Studio director Amir Rao explained that the team considered several possible projects and initially thought it was unlikely to make a direct sequel.

The comments come from Noclip's new Developing Hell II documentary, released around the first anniversary of Hades II's full launch. Supergiant says creative interest had to come before the financial benefits of returning to its most successful game.

Supergiant had never developed a sequel before Hades II. Its previous games, including Bastion, Transistor, Pyre and Hades, each introduced a different world rather than continuing an existing one.

Rao said the studio normally finishes a project and then considers what it learned before deciding where to go next. During that process after Hades, he initially believed the team would probably choose something completely different.

"If making the sequel is the right financial decision, we have made the dumb decision many times in a row," Rao said. He acknowledged that the original game's success mattered, but said that alone would not have been enough to justify spending years on another Hades.

Art director Jen Zee said the size of Greek mythology helped change the team's thinking. Supergiant had already explored gods including Hades, Zeus and Poseidon, but the setting still offered many characters and stories that had not appeared in the original game.

Zee compared the possibilities to an orchard that still had plenty of fruit left to pick. She said the team remained enthusiastic about the world and began seeing a sequel as another creative challenge rather than simply repeating what had worked before.

That challenge itself became part of the appeal. Supergiant had built its reputation around starting fresh with each project, so making a sequel offered the studio something it had never attempted.

Supergiant eventually built the sequel around Melinoë, the Princess of the Underworld and sister of original protagonist Zagreus. Her story introduced witchcraft, the Titan Chronos and new parts of Greek mythology while keeping the roguelike structure of the first game.

The studio has previously said that simply having more stories available was not enough. It wanted Hades II to recapture the sense of discovery players experienced with the original while still standing on its own. That approach resulted in Supergiant's largest game to date. Development lasted around five years, including more than a year in Early Access before version 1.0 launched on September 25, 2025.

Hades II became the studio's first sequel and was named the best-reviewed game of 2025 by both Metacritic and OpenCritic. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions followed in April 2026 after the initial PC and Nintendo releases.

Supergiant has not announced its next project. The studio said earlier this year that it planned to take time to reflect after completing Hades II, leaving open whether its next game will return to an existing world or begin somewhere entirely new.