"The game is the design document": Hades 2 devs don't have "long, elaborate" plans that "lay out the future of the things we're making" because Supergiant is "a heavily iterative studio"

Hades 2 devs "don't have long, elaborate design documents that lay out the future of the things we're making," as Supergiant is "a heavily iterative studio" instead.

Supergiant studio director Amir Rao says as much in a new interview with content creator Haelian (below), which took place just days before Hades 2's 1.0 launch. During their discussion, the YouTuber mentions that when he'd asked Rao years prior during a Hades 1 early access stream if the devs planned to "create dual boons for all the god combinations" in the game, Rao gave "the most diplomatic, corpo answer I've ever heard." Laughing, Rao explains that there's a reason for that – the devs don't always have solid plans in the first place.

"Our studio, the way we make things… we don't have long, elaborate design documents that lay out the future of the things we're making," he begins. "The game is the design document. We're a heavily iterative studio. We make things in-game, and then we always leave time to iterate on those things, edit those things, take them out if they're not working, all that kind of stuff.

"Then we put them into an early access update, and then, you know, some of that stuff we iterate on right away in a patch, some of it gets iterated on in a future major update," he continues. "Some of it takes us a few updates to figure out what we want to do with it, then we make the change."

Interview with Amir Rao, Studio Director of Supergiant Games, creators of Hades!! | Haelian - YouTube

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So, as for those "diplomatic, corpo" answers the pair joke about, Rao says, "often, those non-answers are real because an answer does not exist, not because I'm hiding it. I don't know where the iterations are going to take us. I don't know who is going to have the idea." Furthermore, he adds, "We're still kind of learning. And so, you know, we structure a lot of our processes around learning, like what do we need to learn? Like, what do we need to know now? And what stuff can we afford to know later?"

All in all, he admits, this process "doesn't lend itself to setting in stone what will happen," be that in the early-access, design, or development processes. After launching the best-rated game of 2025 with Hades 2, though, it's clearly a method that works.

Hades 3 is not "preordained," studio director says as Hades 2 leaves early access, and for now Supergiant is focused on the reaction to its new roguelike sequel.