How Hades Creates a Responsive Underworld
Game UX Analysis: Signs and Feedback
Hades is full of information. Providing clever feedback, visuals and sounds for this flourishing world is no easy feat. I aim to analyse how the game’s design creates a responsive experience through using its flawlessly executed signs and feedback.
This article was inspired by the written works of Maria Meireles who has many great articles on Game UX.
Hades
Hades is an story driven action rogue-like developed and published by Supergiant Games. You play as Zagreus, son of Hades, as he attempts to escape from the Underworld to reach Mount Olympus using a variety of powerful Keepsakes, Boons to enhance your build and legendary weaponry to eliminate foes. You gain strength and unravel more of the story with each unique escape attempt.
Usability Heuristics
Good usability is critical to human-computer interaction. Usability heuristics are used in interactive design to avoid common issues, save time and mitigate friction. Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics are the most common rules of thumb to help guide usability evaluations.
Game Heuristics
Due to the variety of genres and novel games, game heuristics have been developed by a multitude of professionals and researchers in the industry focusing on important properties such as UI, UX, controls, flow, challenge and gameplay. In the past, companies have used their own heuristic lists, and/or an adapted Nielsen’s heuristic list.
Currently however, we have Celia Hodent’s The Gamer’s Brain for a more recent list of game specific usability heuristics and design principles. For this analysis I aim to focus on the signs and feedback usability pillar to understand how Hades creates a responsive experience for players, keeping them engaged throughout.
Signs and Feedback
Signs are feedback refer to all the visual, audio and haptic cues that inform players about what is going on in the game, aiding their decision making so that they feel comfortable and in control.
Signs will often have a specific form to inform about a function, meaning they will communicate specific information to players who decode them. These signs will either inform players (informative signs) or encourage players to execute a specific action (inviting signs). They should give quick feedback and be clear to the player.
Signs and Feedback in Hades
Hades is a story and information rich dungeon crawler that needs to organise this information in a clear and concise way to help players make sense of the game world. Let’s start with informative signs. This includes information such as the HUD and Front-end menus (I.e., The Codex).
Informative Signs
Inform the player of a system state.
Main combat HUD.
Here we can see an easily perceptible HUD. All of which remain in the peripheral vision meaning its non-intrusive and doesn’t distract you from main gameplay elements (i.e., enemy health). The HUD clearly displays character stats such as health, cast, Boons, and resources. Stats provided inform the players’ decisions, I.e. What’s my character build?, What can I purchase from the shop?, What choice chamber should I take to heal me?.
Out of combat HUD.
A small but useful piece of HUD when we’re out of combat is the pinned mission in the top left. This provides the player with a short-term goal that indicates importance. Pinned missions once fulfilled, usually reward the player with an significant piece of equipment needed to grow stronger. They use pinned missions wisely and introduce them sparingly to help the player learn over time.
Map progression after defeating a boss.
A short but pleasant informative sign that allows us to see our location in the world, the weapons we have defeated the bosses with and the reward received. We are being informed of what we have done, where we have been and where we’re going.
The Codex
The Codex is a godsend for players and a core element of Hades. The codex presents informative signs mostly in the form of neatly organised text and images, describing the backgrounds and keeping track of characters, locations, and weapons, for example. Every time an entry has made progress you are notified in the HUD.
Inviting Signs
Encourage the player to accomplish certain actions.
There are many inviting signs in Hades so I will try to keep it simple.
The salient yellow exclamation mark above an NPC guides the player to an interaction, there are two variations of this in Hades.
One being to progress the story. The other to signify more importance such as gaining abilities or customisation.
Hades manages light and colour extremely well, especially when it comes to inviting signs. An obvious example is the calm pulsing light which occurs frequently for players’ to hear more about the lore and world building from the storyteller.
Similarly, the light coming from hallways is a great example of guiding the player to a location.
The health bar in Hades is a staple example of when an informative sign turns into an inviting sign. When you fall below a certain threshold the health bar will pulse and brightly flash, signalling to play cautiously.
My final comment for this section is to say how inviting many of the NPCs are. When you walk past they will act human-like and will make a comment towards Zagreus. There are many instances of this which adds so much to the world, which I will talk about below.
Feedback
Provide a reaction of the system to the players action.
When I think of feedback in Hades It’s all about the NPCs, the way they respond, take note of what has happened in the past. They feel alive, playful and full of character. Every dialogue feels unique which is not surprising when you find out Hades has an impressive 21,000 voices lines.
Probably the best form of feedback is Zagreus’s character behaviour. He responds to everything in the world which is incredibly helpful for players, embodying the art of great feedback. Invalid action? New enemy? Ran out of coin? Zagreus will let you know every step of the way.
Another notable feedback mechanism is the enemy spawn rings (also informative) which trigger after killing enemies. It feels naturally apart of the world, this also allows for a little bit of strategy, informing players clearly where and when enemies will spawn.
To deal with the many enemies that spawn in a chamber we have fluid combat and movement on our side. Every hit gives distinct feedback and every dash is unrestricted. Enemy intents are crystal clear through crisp animation which makes the game feel fair and satisfying.
A personal favourite of mine is the Well of Charon, a perfect blend of sound and visuals. The splashing wine with the clink of coin is brilliant. The subtle moments of feedback really make this game special.
Final Thoughts
To make a responsive game world you need thoughtful signs and feedback for all the elements the player interacts with. Doing this correctly will ensure players feel apart of the game space, making the experience much more enjoyable.
Hades is a masterclass in creating a pleasurable, memorable and responsive game, I have learned a lot from writing this. It’s a game worth studying and not just for signs and feedback but for all of the aspects that work in harmony to form a GOTY.
