The Thing About Dying

Christmas meant video games. My parents knew that if they gave me a new game, I’d shut up for six weeks. Mario 64, Zelda, real games that lasted. Nothing you could beat in a weekend.

Still want that now: something demanding and long enough that you don’t finish it and feel ripped off. Something substantial.

I got Hades from Supergiant, the people who made Bastion and Transistor. It’s still in early access, but it’s solid. It’s a rogue-like dungeon crawler set in Greek mythology with bright, bold design. You die constantly. Genuinely all the time. You die, respawn in a pool of blood, go back down. The game is built entirely around this. Supergiant designed it so you fail over and over, learn the patterns, get stronger. Not punishing you for it—just accepting failure as part of how you learn.

After a while the dying stops feeling like failure and becomes the actual rhythm of the thing. You’ll get through it, but it’ll take weeks.