Greetings Hell-farers!
It's Alexandra here from Kitfox with the first Thousand Hells devlog in both video and text form. Game Director David was really excited to share his inspirations for the game, some you might not expect. You can watch the video on the Kitfox Youtube channel:
You can also read the text version of the update below (not a transcript of the video):
Although other computer games have shaped the design of Thousand Hells, I think my game is more influenced by non-game media. The Epic of Gilgamesh is perhaps the original story of a hero traveling to the underworld in search of a prize. Also from Mesopotamian mythology is the goddess Inanna, who visited the underworld. Before we started working on the project, Robin Laws had recommended the book First Ghosts, which helped fill in details on how to deal with the dead. You’ll see all this interpreted as the underworld called the Great Below.
Screenshot from Thousand Hells. The Great Below. Another classic hero story is Orpheus and Eurydice, where the singer has to make his case before the gods of the underworld. A few other Greek myths also deal with someone visiting Hades, such as when Heracles rescued Theseus. The Poetic Edda includes “Brynhild’s Ride to Hell,” where a woman has to deal with a giantess who tries to stop her journey. The Kalevala also has a visit to the underworld. Aaron Reed drew on both Finnish and Norse mythology to create the Midnight North. 
Screenshot from Thousand Hells. The Midnight North. King Arthur went on a dangerous quest to retrieve a magical cauldron in “Spoils of Annwn.” In the Odyssey, Odysseus confers with a dead prophet and meets his dead mother. Although Greg Stafford’s Glorantha isn’t a direct influence (for that, play King of Dragon Pass or Six Ages), the Lightbringers Quest is an obvious example of a hero gathering his companions and visiting the realm of the dead in order to return with a prize. I wanted to go back to the oldest form of Indo-European mythology, so I tracked down Indo-European Poetry and Myth by inter-library loan. Latvian and Lithuanian myth are probably the most pure remnants (as in not influenced by Christianity), and Dance of the Sun Goddess was a useful reference. All this helped inspire the Other Sun underworld. 
Screenshot from Thousand Hells. The Other Sun. Robin Laws suggested that we do an underworld inspired by the art of Hieronymus Bosch. I used Bosch and other artists like Pieter Brueghel for the art direction of the Hell of Nightmares. 
Screenshot from Thousand Hells. The Hell of Nightmares. Steven Soderbergh’s remake of Ocean’s Eleven is a classic heist story, where George Clooney assembles a team of experts to travel deep into a casino for the prize. Cornershop’s song “Staging the Plaguing of the Raised Platform” isn’t a direct influence, but its lyric “Going into hell to get some people out” gave me the game’s original working title (Going Into Hell). A few books weren’t really influences but might be of interest to fans of stories about the underworld. R. F. Kuang’s Katabasis is very much like a Thousand Hells mission: the heroine goes to hell to rescue her academic advisor. Tale of the Nišan Shamaness is a great story of a plucky woman rescuing someone. Her journey doesn’t fit into the game structure but I hope to use some elements. The Nart story “Shoshlan in the Land of the Dead” is about visiting the land of the dead but seems to have a heavy Christian influence. The underworlds of Thousand Hells are just where you go when you die, not places of torment. And A Short Stay in Hell also has a less relevant afterlife. Oddly, Dante’s Inferno isn’t really an influence. I haven’t read it but it’s tied to Christianity which would make it less applicable. However, Boticelli’s illustration was the background of the main menu in early builds. Thousand Hells draws on a lot of mythology. But it’s probably best thought of as a cross between Orpheus and Ocean’s Eleven.
We hope you enjoyed this first devlog. What would you like to see David talk about next? Do you have a favourite Underworld-inspired story? Discuss this update and all other things Thousand Hells on the Kitfox Discord in the thousand-hells channel.
-Alexandra and David