Who Is Supergiant Games? The Studio Behind Hades

Supergiant Games is the independent studio behind Hades, but its work goes well beyond repeated escapes from the Underworld. Before Greek gods and shifting dungeon runs, the team made a narrated action adventure, a science-fiction RPG, and a story built around mystical competitions.

Knowing those differences gives you a better idea of what to expect from the studio’s other games. Shared artists, musicians, and writers do not mean every project plays the same way.

A studio that began with Bastion

Supergiant was founded in 2009 by Amir Rao and Gavin Simon. The studio started in a house in San Jose, California, and later moved to San Francisco. Its current team page says all seven original members still work together, alongside colleagues around the world.

Its first game, Bastion, launched in 2011. Development began in September 2009, and the core team grew to seven people, with outside help in areas including animation, 3D modeling, and testing.

The game’s narrator responds to your actions as you move through a broken world. Storytelling happens alongside the fighting, rather than depending entirely on scenes that stop you from playing.

Different games, different ways to play

Supergiant’s catalog makes more sense as a series of distinct projects than as one formula with new artwork. The official game descriptions and FAQs show how much the main activity changes:

Game	Main structure
Bastion	An action RPG with reactive narration and customizable weapons.
Transistor	A science-fiction action RPG combining fast combat with strategic planning.
Pyre	A party-based RPG built around three-on-three competitions and a branching story.
Hades	Repeated dungeon escape attempts with changing builds and continuing story progress.
Hades II	A sequel centered on sorcery and a battle against the Titan of Time.

Released in 2014, Transistor followed Bastion with a new world and a different combat approach. Supergiant says it reinvested money from its debut into the second game, which it also published itself.

Then came Pyre in 2017. Winning or losing a competition changes the journey, but defeat does not force you to reload and repeat the match. The story continues with the result.

For a player coming from Hades, that distinction matters. An interest in the studio’s characters can carry across its catalog, while an interest specifically in randomized action runs may not.

The people behind the recognizable style

Several long-running roles help explain why these different worlds still share a family resemblance. Supergiant’s team page identifies the people responsible for key parts of that identity:

• Jen Zee: Art direction and the hand-painted visual style.
• Darren Korb: Music and audio.
• Greg Kasavin: Writing and design, including worlds, characters, and stories.
• Logan Cunningham: Voice performances, beginning with Bastion’s narrator.

Those roles sit alongside engineering, animation, environment art, quality assurance, publishing, and other work. A distinctive game comes from several disciplines fitting together, even when a few names become especially familiar.

How Hades brought earlier ideas together

Supergiant describes Hades as drawing on the action of Bastion, the atmosphere and depth of Transistor, and the character-focused storytelling of Pyre. The studio built the game for Early Access, allowing its design and narrative to develop alongside player feedback. Version 1.0 arrived on September 17, 2020.

The connection is useful because it explains more than a list of release dates. Hades put familiar creative interests into a structure where another attempt could also mean another conversation or story discovery.

Do you need to play the games in order?

No studio-wide play order is required for Bastion, Transistor, Pyre, and Hades. Their official descriptions introduce separate settings and premises. Hades II is the explicitly named sequel, so treat that pair separately when deciding where to begin.

Choose an earlier game by the activity you want: narrated action, tactical planning, or a branching team story. Supergiant’s older catalog offers more than an earlier version of Hades.

Image Credit: Supergiant Games