The Multiplier: Looking at the History of Difficulty in Supergiant Games

While writing up a piece discussing how Supergiant Games’ roguelite title, Hades, was Better On Hard, I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole researching the studio's past releases. Where I expected to find more-or-less similar systems, I noticed a fascinating trend of evolution in their approach to difficulty! As such, and as a bonus chapter to the aforementioned article, I have compiled the short history of the difficulty multiplier.

If you are unfamiliar with the studio outside of the Greek myth roguelike, they have a fair bit of history with story-centric titles. Starting with the release of Bastion in 2011, the studio has experimented with interactive narrative and the connection between story and gameplay, aiming to create a living and reactive experience of sorts.

In their inaugural title, you take on enemies in semi-linear levels and collect resources to level up, craft upgrades for your weapons, and improve the titular Bastion, a safe haven for people fleeing a catastrophe. Now, when considering difficulty, one would expect the common spread of Easy, Normal, and Hard, with each affecting enemy health, damage output, and so on. Instead, Bastion has a multiplier system.

As soon as you rebuild the Shrine, you are given the option of activating the Idol of the many deities of the world. When enabled, the Idol will add a new modifier to the game, buffing your enemies, giving them new abilities, or making them more resilient to your attacks! For example, the Idol of Micia, the Lorn Mother, will give enemies regenerating health, whereas activating Acobi, the Chastened Maid, will make enemies drop a harmful explosive upon death.

You may be wondering if the Idols are simply a way to increase the level of challenge for those who relish danger, but they do come with a benefit: as you activate shrines, they will give you a cumulative bonus on all experience and resources earned! Since you are free to enable or disable these Idols as you see fit, it’s possible to experiment and find the right amount and combination of modifiers to match your level of skill. You can also leave them all off without much loss or heartache.

Now, let’s move on from these burgeoning beginnings to the developer's second title, Transistor. Whilst both reminiscent and clearly separate from the previous experience, the game offered a fresh system to manage skills and difficulty: using the titular gigantic green blade, the main character, Red, is able to install various programs to alter both her active abilities and passive bonuses. As the game progresses and the true nature of the Transistor unfolds, you are eventually given the choice of installing special chips, called Limiters, to modify your enemies in a similar vein to Bastion.

Each Limiter, much like the aforementioned Idols, will affect enemy stats, spawn rates, or the resources the player has at their disposal. For example, one Limiter may make enemies spawn faster or in larger quantities, whereas another may lessen the number of skills you can have equipped at once. As before, each installed Limiter adds a cumulative experience modifier up to a total of 32% more.

To not bore you to tears, we’ll not spend much time on the third entry in the studio’s works, Pyre, as the system is still much the same as before, with modifiers (Titan Stars replacing Idols and Limiters, this time around) being used to add more difficulty in exchange for greater reward. However, here is also where we see a slight variance in the offered modifiers, namely the bane and boon offered by the constellation, Yslach Astral-Born: “your adversaries shall be more cunning and much quicker to react”. Whilst this may not seem like much, making enemies move a bit faster, it does set the scene for, in my opinion, one of the best forms of difficulty manipulation I’ve seen in games, combining the best parts of all the previous titles.

We’ve already gone over Hades in the main article, but I will reiterate here how I feel the Extreme Measures system is a milestone for gaming. I often say how proper difficulty should be implemented via enemies with smarter tactics, better movesets, or new abilities, but I do also know doing this in practice can be difficult and time-consuming. Having an example of a game where this has been done successfully is a gigantic step in the right direction, as we can simply point Hadesward and cry “make it like this”.

To summarise my thoughts on Supergiant Games’ advancement concerning difficulty, now that I’ve talked your ear off, their approach is meant to accommodate many types of players. As I’ve mentioned ad nauseam by now in the series, twiddling the damage and defence knobs of bosses and enemies in general is an easy, but narrow method in controlling difficulty; we are individuals and one may find easy what is almost impossible to another.

By implementing a system that allows players to have a hand in deciding what aspects of the game to tweak, be it taking more environmental damage or making enemies insult your hairstyle, the experience is shaped to suit our skills and playstyles. Seeing a system that takes this into account evolve through the span of a decade and change is both fascinating and makes me hopeful for things to come. Come on Supergiant, keep it up in Hades II!