Hades beaten in under eight minutes

My most recent attempt to complete Hades ended in a pretty devastating way: only a few blows from finishing the final boss, after a good 40 minutes of intense gameplay, I was tragically smacked down and sent back downriver to a smirking Hypnos once again. And to make matters worse, today I learned someone's completed a Hades run in under eight minutes.

For those uninitiated, Hades is the latest roguelike from Supergiant Games, and tasks players with escaping the Greek underworld using a variety of powers gifted to them by other gods. While Hades is designed to keep players entertained with story beats and various upgrades between attempts, the runs themselves can be brutal and unforgiving. Which makes it all the more impressive that speedrunner Vorime has managed the whole thing in just seven minutes and 16 seconds.

As spotted by Rock Paper Shotgun, Vorime currently sits atop the Hades leaderboard on Speedrun.com, and managed to set the world record on Tuesday. The seven-minute record measures Vorime's in-game time, and doesn't account for time spent in menus and picking abilities, with the whole attempt taking 20 minutes and 32 seconds in real-world time.

Should you want to watch the entire attempt for yourself, you can find the video below - but beware spoilers if you haven't yet completed Hades.

For those of you wondering how on earth this was achieved, Vorime went with the infernal arm Adamant Rail with the aspect of Eris, which allows you to deal more damage for eight seconds after absorbing your special's blast. From looking at the Hades leaderboard it seems that Fists, Spear, Sword and more have been used to complete fast runs, which is testament to the fact Hades can be beaten in myriad different ways. But here's a screenshot of Vorime's boons and levels that were used to achieve the victory, should you want to copy some of those ideas:

Supergiant Games recently announced that Hades had sold an impressive 1m copies, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the game crop up on more than a few games of the year lists. Maybe I'll have finally beaten it by then.

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