#supergiant games aesthetic

[shittykinaesthetics]

Shitty Achilles aesthetic: hades game speedrun but i don’t even care about finishing the plot i’m literally just trying to reunite this man with his husband in as little time as possible

[fruitgravies]

mother night

ins - twt

[infinitymythos]

Feeding Chaos🪽🦋🌌

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[heydragonfly]

alright i know lots of folks don’t love the chaos redesign and some folks are saying they look like meg which like i get, esp with the singular wing but to me? they look like Nyx. they look like they molded their new appearance in the image of their daughter, who they’ve recently reconnected with after aeons of separation. like they have not just emotionally become more the parent of Nyx, but physically mirrored this parenthood, this embodied connection, by choice

(this relationship which they’ve now lost, leaving them alone, again)

(until a certain princess of the dead arrives)

[pixelartparker]

would you be able to draw Theseus or Asterius from Hades (by Supergiant games)?

Of course! ^^ I went with Theseus but I might come back and draw Asterius too lmao. I love the art style!

I hope you like it :)

Suggestions, tips, and requests are welcome!!! I don't do any NSFW but I'll create for any fandom. Feel free to use this for something if you want. A like, reblog, or follow if you do would be appreciated!

~ Parker

[j-artzz]

The character designs in the hades games are URGHHHHHHHHHH

[digitaldaqs]

Little pixel fanart of Transistor! One of my favourite indie game, I mean, you have a robo-dog and play fetch with him, also your sword is your boyfriend ♥ you also end up running hectic, Breaching everything around

[hayaeyer]

[1taliart]

Hey what would you know I’m not dead.

Maybe I bit off more than I could chew with this illustration, but I couldn’t help trying to mix my love for this game and my interest for old forgotten gods.

If it’s of any interest to you, Ataegina or Ataecina was an ancient Hispanic goddess, often assimilated with Persephone or Proserpina due to her simultaneous association with spring and the underworld.

[jollysunflora]

#this is so silly I love it omg#the sheep looks so happy….

jesus in the hades art style

[nitw]

the inside of old silicon processors are like angels to me they're so beautiful........ they look like klimt paintings...... i understand why supergiant wanted to make a whole game based around that aesthetic

[fruitgravies]

stygian boatman

insta - twt

[canmom]

so hades 2 huh

it's fun! i am more convinced after actually playing it than i was in the runup to it. the green colour palette looked a little drab in the videos but it works better for me fullscreen in game, and I really like the second zone's design. the major aesthetic change does go a little way towards making this feel like 'new Supergiant game' instead of just a rehash of the first game.

the difficulty floor is higher than the first game. i think it's well-tuned to go into if you've beaten that one. so far i've played 6 runs, seen the first boss in 5, and and beaten her in 2 of them; yet to get more than about halfway through the second zone after that tho!

the new mana mechanic is kinda interesting, lots of tradeoffs to make. it's a bit more granular than the cast in the first game; you use it to do powered up versions of your attacks, and spending it also charges up the Call-equivalent.

i'm increasingly intrigued by the setting, and i really like some of the side characters like arachne. i think the time skip was a good decision - the story of Zagreus et al. was definitely done. the epilogue ending of the first game was way too neat.

still, starting a revenge plot in media res is curious. especially when Nemesis lampshades the lack of personal motivation. compared to Zagreus's very pressing and relatable motivation (run away from my abusive dad), Melinoë's motivation is a little more abstract - this seems to be deliberate. but it does a fair bit to sell the sort of 'desperate resistance base' setting. it definitely seems rather like they're setting up a twist down the line. but it lacks the immediate emotional hook of the overbearing patriarch in the first game. curious to see how it will work once I've seen more of the story.

as far as the new gods, I'm fascinated by the decision to make Hephaestus and Hestia both be Northern - probably Yorkshire. it's always fun hearing regional UK accents in games. they do also both feel like responses to the criticism that Jen Z never designs fat characters lmao. still, they are good designs. both have satisfying mechanics. Selene also has a really good design I think.

the other gods' mechanics have naturally been redesigned to fit the new game. still broadly the same themes, e.g. Zeus will still be lightning based, but different interpretations of what that means, so for example you have 'hitting an enemy produces a lightning blast behind them' as the primary Zeus mechanic instead of chain lightning. which definitely keeps things fresh. Melinoë's kit has a lot of directional attacks and, with the Cast now being an AOE which slows/freezes enemies, there's a lot more emphasis now on positioning enemies to set up AOE attacks which is interesting.

the witch stuff is quite fun in an admittedly slightly cheesy way. it's definitely pull on aesthetic currents which aren't at all Ancient Greek, like the pointed hats. but hey! I can get into it, it's not like the game's aesthetic has ever been all that strictly historical. even if I am still scratching my head at 'so mote it be'. apparently it's an archaic word meaning 'may', i.e. 'may it be so'.

of course the main thing is, the actual moment to moment gameplay is fun. it flows just as the first game did, and it's just as addictive with the way it spreads out story breadcrumbs. the vfx and such look great, the movement is already super tightly tuned (tbf it's basically the same as the first game with the addition of a new 'hold dash to sprint'), and there's a already good variety of enemy mechanics.

there's some obvious placeholders for some of the UI art and character portraits (notably none of the keepsakes have been drawn yet), but overall it's surprisingly polished for an early-access build. all the voice acting is already there - it's fun seeing the Supergiant voice cast return in new roles.

the meta progression element... there's some neat ideas, like an upgrade system with a limited set of slots that very much calls to mind NieR Automata's chip system. so there are some stronger tradeoffs to make; it's not as simple as 'spend resource, get better' as it was in the first game. and it's clearly possible to advance quite far even without a lot of meta resource investment. so far it definitely feels like my main limit is skill, and I'll progress further once I learn more of the enemy patterns and figure out what builds I like to play.

(though I guess the idea with this kind of game is that the power ups quietly boost you and make it feel like you're getting better a lot faster than you are just learning the game lmao)

overall, it's just really fun to have another Supergiant game to sink my teeth into haha. I still wish they'd continued their streak of coming up with new IPs each time, because they'd come up with fantastic settings, but there's plenty of interest here still.

also the more I work in game dev the more I can appreciate just what a ludicrous amount of polish there is in Supergiant's games. I can only imagine the amount of work it must have taken to tune the feel of everything this tight.

[scalefeathers]

Nyx is an interesting case! She’s not a Titan, technically, but a primordial goddess (and is described as such by both the game and mythological sources afaik). The primordials were the first generation of gods who sprang directly from Chaos; two of them, Uranus and Gaia, gave birth to the Titans, and two of them (Cronus and Rhea) gave birth to the Olympians.

As far as I know, Nyx is the only primordial we’ve met so far in the games. The Olympians and the Chthonic gods have an Ancient Greek aesthetic (naturally) and the Titans have an Ancient Egyptian aesthetic and Chaos has . . . whatever Chaos has, but it remains to be seen if the primordials would have their own visual style. It’s hard to draw any conclusions about them based on Nyx alone; she does dress like the other gods, but that could just be her attempting to fit in at her workplace, since she seems to not want to make waves.

The eyes are also interesting, because the titans don’t have pupils, and neither does Chaos (I think), but Nyx does. Maybe it skipped a generation?

can we talk about how none of the Titans have pupils

it’s such a minor thing but it really helps convey the sense that these are a different breed of god: more ancient, more primal, and more distant from humanity than their descendants. No coincidence either, I think, that their costumes look more Ancient Egyptian than Ancient Greek, Chronos’s especially.

Even their bodies seem less organic than those of the Olympians. Chronos looks like he’s made of black marble veined with gold, Selene’s cheekbones could cut glass, and Hecate’s abs are literally chiseled. They’re just as beautiful as the other gods, but they’re unsettling too.

(I’m also obsessed with the fact that the Titan of Time has a literal hourglass figure. Love that for him)

[eldritchlittleblackdragon]

I grabbed Hades two early access and used the day off work I had yesterday to play it and here are some of my initial impressions/thoughts:

It's nice to see a female protagonist whose more on the broody side. You tend to see that more with male characters so that's interesting. But at the same time she's not exactly a broody character overall, but she definitely feels the weight of the world on her shoulders and has a lot of thoughts about what she's up against and what she's fighting for.

Nice to see a mix of old and new characters, and have some character's roles shuffled around and some old characters look different while staying true to their aesthetics from the previous game.

I like the mentor/student and ward/guardian role of Mel and Hecate. It's clear Hecate has high expectations and takes things seriously but it's also clear Hecate cares about Mel a lot.

Maybe it's just because I haven't started from scratch on the original in a while, but Hades II feels tougher than Hades. Especially because the dash feels slower. (And this feels true even with God Mode enabled. Speaking of which I like this can be toggled rather than being tied to a specific playthrough like in the original.)

Kind of sad some boon abilities got nerfed.

The story is good and the voice acting is stellar. In general I've never had any complaints about those things in Supergiant Games, but I still thought it was worth mentioning.

Love the more intense remixes in the soundtrack. The story has a certain dark/heavy edge to it that's different from the original Hades and I think the OST accurately reflects that. (Hades was emotionally heavy too, but it's got a different vibe to it because of the circumstances in the story.)

THE WITCHY AESTHETICS

I really, really can't wait for Mel to meet her big brother and for the two of them to interact.

[thumpypuppy]

what sort of other game soundtracks or composers (especially indies but either way) have inspired your work?

Oh gosh, this is such an amazing question!!!

Personally I (Lindar) have so so so many inspirations because I'm a music lover, I'm 37, and I've been playing video games as far back as I can remember.

So first and foremost I have to give a shout-out to Lena Raine because back in like… 2016(?) I was trying to take my studio to a more professional level and invest in some stuff beyond what just comes with any given DAW, so I reached out to her and she was kind enough to answer my dozens of questions and talk shop with me. She is ultimately why Studio Thumpy Puppy has its current sound. I don't know her personally, but she was an absolute sweetie to me, extremely helpful, and y'all know she writes banger after banger track.

Gotta mention Ben Prunty, who is an absolute legend in indie soundtracks.

Met Disasterpeace at Day of the Devs 2016 along with a bunch of other legends in the scene and what an encouraging sweetheart!

Of course I'm a huge fan of Sadie Greyduck who is one of my composers! Go check out her Bandcamp or look for her on streaming services!

Love me some Darren Korb. Honestly like every Supergiant game has been a banger, but it wouldn't be the same without those soundtracks.

On that note you can't go wrong with Danny Baranowsky. Love me some Necrodancer!

Also y'all gotta check out M Gewehr (MWGewehr on birdsite).

Also gotta mention 2Mello who does amazing work and makes some of the funkiest beats.

Of course if we're talking about 2Mello we gotta mention Hideki Naganuma! UNDERSTAND! UNDERSTAND! THE CONCEPT. OF LOVE!

Oh gosh and then Winifred Phillips does amazing work.

While we're here I know she's not a game composer but go listen to Wendy Carlos!

Then there's like… all of the various people across games like Doom, Quake, Borderlands, etc. Sasha Dikiciyan, Jesper Kyd, Mick Gordon…

Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy), Kiochi Sugiyama (Dragon Quest), Yoko Shimomura (Street Fighter), Takashi Tateishi (MegaMan II), Hip Tanaka (Metroid, Earthbound), Koji Kondo and Toru Minegishi (Legend of Zelda), Daisuke Amaya (Cave Story), Eirik Suhrke (Downwell), Daisuke Ishiwatari (Guilty Gear), the sound team on Sonic Adventure 2, Masato Nakamura (Sonic 2), Brad Buxer et al (Sonic 3&K)…

So let's also take into account that a lot of the game soundtracks that have inspired me over the years are influenced by things that aren't game soundtracks, because those are a relatively recent invention, so we have to talk about how Plantasia by Mort Garson is a direct inspiration for Ocarina of Time and "Dancing Mad" from FF6 is literally just Tarkus from Emerson, Lake & Palmer. A *lot* of early game composers were just prog nerds who listened to like… ELP, King Crimson, Rush, Yes, Magma, Van Der Graaf Generator, Camel, Caravan, Gentle Giant, Soft Machine, Gong… and then also a lot of more popular 80s rock that I'm not gonna list out…

The history of music is absolutely wild and there's so much inspiration out there it's absolutely baffling. Go listen to stuff you've never heard before, analyze it, understand what the appeal and aesthetic is, listen to the last 100 years of the pop charts and then learn where that music came from and who their influences were… go listen to motown! Listen to bebop and jazz and future funk and central Asian folk music and like… get out there and expand your horizons, because like… there's SO MUCH good music out there.