Importance of Balancing

The Importance of Balancing in Roguelite Games: A Case Study with Hades

Roguelite games, characterised by their procedurally generated levels, repeated deaths with progression elements, and varying degrees of player customisation, depend heavily on balancing to maintain their appeal. Hades by Supergiant Games is a shining example of how balance can make or break a roguelite, ensuring that gameplay remains engaging, rewarding, and challenging for players of all skill levels.

One significant finding in writing this observation of game balancing was thinking about how game development needs to consider player’s psychology. If the challenge in a game is too difficult then the player gets anxious, and if the challenge is too easy, the player loses interest in game (Pal and Sipra DasBit, 2024).

Ensuring Fairness Across Runs

Balancing is crucial to ensuring that players feel their success depends on skill rather than luck. In Hades, procedural generation governs many elements – such as enemy placement, room layouts, and the boons granted by Olympian gods. Despite this randomness, the game maintains a sense of fairness by ensuring that:

Early game advantages are accessible, preventing players from feeling underpowered at the start of a run.
Boons and upgrades align with the player’s chosen weapon and playstyle, ensuring synergy.
Enemies scale appropriately, creating difficulty curves that challenge but don’t overwhelm.

This fairness ensures that victory feels earned, not random, while failures feel like learning opportunities rather than unfair punishments. Another well-regarded feature about Hades is its storytelling ability by incorporating narrative into the game. After each death the player is provided a variety of dialogue scenes and interactions with other characters that keep audiences engaged, and to an extent makes dying feel worth it.

Promoting Build Variety

One of Hades’ standout features is the diverse set of viable builds, made possible through its balanced design. Players can combine boons, upgrades, keepsakes, and companions to create unique strategies. The game’s balance ensures:

No single boon or combination dominates. Even a less-than-optimal build can succeed with skillful play.
Each weapon has its strengths and weaknesses, ensuring players experiment with different playstyles.
Synergies across boons encourage creative combinations, making every run distinct and rewarding.

This promotes replayability, a cornerstone of roguelites, as players are motivated to try new combinations.

Maintaining Difficulty Progression

In Hades, the pacing and escalation of difficulty are meticulously designed. The game employs mechanics like the Pact of Punishment, which lets players tailor their challenge level after completing the game once. This ensures:

Beginners can learn the mechanics without feeling overwhelmed, while experienced players can push their limits.
The game grows alongside the player, providing fresh challenges and avoiding stagnation.
Bosses, such as Hades himself, are challenging but offer predictable patterns, giving players room to learn and improve.

Without careful balancing, difficulty spikes or lulls could frustrate players, breaking the game’s rhythm.

Rewarding Player Progression

Roguelites thrive on progression systems that reward repeated attempts. In Hades, the interplay between meta-progression (upgrades through the Mirror of Night or weapon aspects) and in-run progression (temporary upgrades like boons) is a masterclass in balance:

Meta-progression upgrades give players a sense of growing power while leaving room for skill to shine.
Currency distribution (Darkness, Gems, Nectar, etc.) ensures that every run feels rewarding, even in failure.

This balance keeps players engaged over dozens (or even hundreds) of runs, as every session contributes to long-term growth.

Encouraging Mastery Without Punishing New Players

A common pitfall in roguelites is alienating new players with punishing mechanics. Hades avoids this through:

God Mode, which provides gradual damage resistance for struggling players without trivializing the experience.
- God Mode grants 20% damage resistance, increasing by 2% each time a run ends in death (rather than escape). The damage resistance caps at 80%. This mode was added to make the game more accessible, as well as to give players a way to experience the story of Hades more quickly if they wish. (https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/God_Mode)
Accessible mechanics like predictable enemy patterns and forgiving hitboxes.
Systems that reward mastery, such as Heat levels and weapon-specific achievements.

This approach ensures the game appeals to both casual players and hardcore roguelite fans, expanding its audience.

Conclusion

Balancing is the backbone of roguelite games, and Hades exemplifies how it can elevate the genre. Through fair mechanics, diverse builds, gradual difficulty progression, rewarding systems, and accessibility, Hades ensures that every player can have a fair gameplay experience, and an enjoyable one at that.