Production 4: Doing Things

At the time of writing this, I had sunk nearly 65 hours of playtime into the new Hades II game, and at no point did it dawn on me that I was actually learning something. Now, looking back, I can say that the rogue-lite genre—which neatly encompasses Hades II—is emblematic of a design philosophy centred on failure as progression. Each run through a rogue-lite begins and ends in death, yet the player carries forward bits and pieces of progress, such as knowledge of enemy patterns, new unlockable skills, and a better understanding of the games intricate and systemic rhythms. Rogue-lites are thus defined through recursive movement: players learn by conquering a dungeon endlessly. This structure positions failure as a pedagogical tool and reframes repetition as a meaningful learning process rather than a setback.

In How to Do Things With Videogames, Bogost describes games as systems that teach through their procedures, also known as procedural rhetoric. The rogue-lite genre communicates a rhetoric of persistence and iteration. Its systems instruct players that meaning arises from dynamic engagement with challenge. What players learn is not confined to the fictional world they are playing in, and the takeaways they receive are that of patience and adaptability. This learning process also mirrors broader cultural ideologies surrounding productivity and self-improvement. We learn from our own failures and become more resilient by trying.

Supergiant Games’ Hades (2020) and Hades II (2024) provide a perfect case study of how the rogue-lite genre embodies Bogost’s concept of procedural rhetoric and “does” something. Both games center on their respective protagonists, Zagreus and Melinoe, the son and daughter of Hades, respectively, as they repeatedly attempt to escape or get to the Underworld. Each failed escape return them to their homes, where new dialogue, relationships, and narrative revelations unfold. 

In this structure, the Hades series transforms failure into progress: death is not an endpoint but a mechanism for storytelling and personal growth. Through its design, the game makes an argument about persistence and self-knowledge and teaches that advancement is also emotional and social. As players navigate countless failed runs, they gradually uncover the intertwined systems of combat efficiency and familial intimacy that define the protagonists’ worlds. In Bogost’s terms, the Hades series uses its procedures to “do” something: it communicates that meaningful change arises from cyclical effort and reflection. The series’ rhythm becomes a procedural metaphor for resilience that mirrors both the player’s and protagonist’s journeys towards understanding themselves. 

From a formal perspective, Hades constructs the player’s role and identity through a tightly bounded range of actions—attack, dash, cast, die, and repeat. Each iteration reinforces the cyclical structure of play. In Bogost’s framework, such mechanics are not neutral; they do rhetorical work by shaping how players understand agency and progression. The limited but expressive set of possible actions teaches players to value experimentation within constraint. Moreover, Hades ties behavioral choices (weapon selection, boons from Olympian gods, and dialogue with allies) to moral and affective outcomes, thus creating a new layer of emotional investment.