Hotline Miami

Hotline Miami is a 2012 top-down shooter game developed by Dennaton Games and published by Devolver Digital for Windows. The game is set in 1989 Miami, and revolves primarily around an unnamed silent protagonist—dubbed "Jacket" by fans—receiving coded messages on his answering machine instructing him to commit massacres against the local Russian mafia. The gameplay blends a top-down perspective with stealth, and the story features extreme violence and surreal storytelling, along with a soundtrack and visuals inspired by 1980s culture.

Hotline Miami
Cover art by Niklas Åkerblad, featuring Jacket, the Girlfriend, the Biker, and the three masked personas^[1]
Developer(s)	Dennaton Games
Publisher(s)	Devolver Digital
Designer(s)	Jonatan Söderström Dennis Wedin
Programmer(s)	Jonatan Söderström
Artist(s)	Dennis Wedin
Writer(s)	Jonatan Söderström Dennis Wedin
Engine	Game Maker 7 PhyreEngine (ports)
Platform(s)	Windows OS X PlayStation 3 PlayStation Vita Linux PlayStation 4 Android Nintendo Switch Xbox One Stadia PlayStation 5 Xbox Series X/S
Release	23 October 2012 Windows WW: 23 October 2012 OS X WW: 18 March 2013 PS3, PS Vita NA: 25 June 2013 EU: 26 June 2013 Linux WW: 9 September 2013 PlayStation 4 NA: 19 August 2014 EU: 20 August 2014 Android WW: 30 March 2015 Hotline Miami Collection Nintendo Switch WW: 19 August 2019 Xbox One WW: 7 April 2020 Stadia WW: 22 September 2020 PS5, Xbox Series X/S WW: 23 October 2023
Genre(s)	Top-down shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player

The game was developed as a spiritual successor to a cancelled game from 2004 referred to as Super Carnage, where the goal was to kill as many people as possible. The game was developed within a nine-month span and released on 23 October 2012 for Windows. In 2013, the game was ported to OS X and Linux on 18 March and 9 September, respectively, while Abstraction Games ported the game to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita on 25 June 2013 and PlayStation 4 on 19 August 2014.

Upon release, Hotline Miami received critical acclaim, with praise particularly focused on its narrative, themes, soundtrack, color palette, and gameplay. It has since been considered to be one of the greatest games of all time, along with being cited as a highly influential independent video game and as a notable cult video game. The success of its publisher, Devolver Digital, has been attributed to the success of the game. A sequel, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, was released in March 2015. Hotline Miami was re-released alongside its sequel as part of Hotline Miami: Collected Edition in Japan in 2015 and as part of the Hotline Miami Collection in August 2019.

Gameplay

 

A screenshot of the player engaging in a standoff with the Russian Mafia. The points are visible on the top right of the image.

Hotline Miami is a top-down shooter game set in Miami during the 1980s.^[2] The game is divided into several chapters,^[3] which is further divided up into floors.^[4] At the beginning of each chapter, the player character "Jacket"^[a] receives a message his answering machine, instructing him to travel to a different part of Miami and eliminate all enemies there. The player is able to defeat their opponents through a variety of melee and ranged attacks, ranging from knives and crowbars to guns.^[2] Additional methods available to the player include knocking out enemies with a door, using them as a human shield as defense, or kicking them against the wall. If the enemy isn't immediately killed in an attack, the player can perform a finishing move.^[4][7]

Before each chapter begins, the player can choose from a variety of animal masks,^[5] which grant different abilities depending on the mask chosen. These attributes include the players gunshots being silenced or finishing moves being sped up.^[4] Both the player and enemies can be felled from a single attack. To compensate, the player is able to quickly restart the current stage after death, allowing the player to rethink their strategy.^[8] Additional types of enemies appear throughout the game, such as dogs.^[8] Additionally, enemy AI is inconsistent, with reactions to attacks ranging from responding immediately to attacks or sounds to doing absolutely nothing.^[3]

The player is awarded points with each enemy they kill, with the amount of points awarded being determined by the method of execution or the amount of enemies killed in a short duration of time.^[7] At the end of each chapter, the players total score is tallied up and the player is given a final rating based on their performance. High scores will unlock new masks and weapons for the player to use.^[9][4]

Synopsis

Plot

In April 1989, Jacket receives a message on his answering machine and a package is delivered to his door containing a rooster mask. Alongside the package, there are strict instructions advising Jacket to retrieve a briefcase from the Russian mafia at a metro station using violence. Jacket continues to receive messages on his answering machine instructing him to conduct more massacres. After each massacre, Jacket visits a store or a restaurant where a man known as Beard^[b] meets him and gives away free items such as pizza, films, and alcoholic beverages. During an assault on the estate of a film producer, Jacket rescues a girl and takes her to his apartment, nursing her back to good health and developing a romantic relationship with her. After this assault, Jacket is visited by three masked personas who question him for his actions, with these encounters continuing throughout the game. In another assault on a phone company, Jacket finds everybody dead except another operative known as the Biker, who is attempting to access a computer, and the two fight to the death.^[c]

As Jacket continues his massacres, his perception of reality becomes increasingly more surreal. Talking corpses begin appearing at Beard's places of work, and eventually Beard himself abruptly dies, replaced by a bald man named Richter that offers Jacket nothing. After coming home one night, Jacket discovers his girlfriend murdered and a rat-masked man on his couch, who shoots him and places him into a coma. In one final encounter with the masked persona Richard, he tells Jacket that he will "never see the full picture". It is afterwards revealed that Jacket was reliving the events of the past two months while comatose after being shot by Richter. After waking up, Jacket overhears that his attacker has been put in police custody, and escapes the hospital in search of him. He storms Miami police headquarters, killing everyone inside and finds his attacker to be Richter, who had also been receiving messages on his answering machine. After interrogating him, Jacket spares his life and steals the file on the police investigations of the killings before heading to a nightclub that the calls were tracked to. He finds the address to be that of the Russian Mafia headquarters, kills all of the guards, and confronts both leaders of the syndicate. After Jacket kills his personal bodyguard and injures his hands, one of the leaders "spares him the pleasure" and commits suicide. When Jacket confronts the other, he contemplates the things he did and allows Jacket to kill him without resistance. Afterwards, a victorious Jacket walks out onto the balcony and lights a cigarette, taking a photo out of his pocket and throwing it out.

After the completion of the Jacket levels, the player unlocks a series of levels where the player character is the Biker. Similarly to Jacket, the Biker has been receiving messages on his answering machine, and is dedicated to identify the source of the messages. After the encounter with Jacket depicted earlier and various interrogations, he finds the source of the messages to be 50 Blessings, a group operated by two janitors that attempts to undermine the Russo-American Coalition, which they view as "anti-American", by ordering their operatives to commit numerous anti-Russian massacres. The game features two endings, with the full ending requiring the player to find puzzle pieces scattered throughout the game to crack 50 Blessings' password. If the player manages to crack the password, the Biker uncovers their secrets and political agenda. Without the password, the Biker is mocked and fails to discover the truth. In both endings, the player has the option to either kill or spare the janitors. Afterwards, the Biker departs from Miami.^[11][12]

Themes and analysis

Hotline Miami advocates an anti-violence message through making the player feel guilt for their in-game massacres.^[13] The game utilizes upbeat music and a score system to drive the player to commit the massacres, though the violence in each killing is emphasized through gruesome executions that have over exaggerated gore. Examples of these executions include disfiguring enemies with boiling water, shooting dogs with shotguns, and bashing enemy heads in with baseball bats. As the game is fast paced, the player may enter a state where they're focused exclusively on their inputs and become desensitized to the actions they are committing, assuming they weren't desensitized to begin with.^[11][13] At the end of each level, the upbeat music is replaced with ambience as the player exits the building as the motionless, gory remains of enemies flood the floor.^[11]

Throughout the game, the aforementioned masked personas that appear in Jacket's dreams attempt to make the player question themselves over their actions. Each of the masked personas serve a specific purpose in these encounters; the yellow-tinted Richard is often inquisitive, the blue-tinted Don Juan is often passive and friendly, while the red-tinted Rasmus is extremely aggressive. Don Juan interrogates the player through messages such as "knowing oneself means acknowledging one’s actions", while Richard does so with more direct messages such as "do you like hurting other people?"^[12] Additionally, the masked figures never reveal any details about the identity of Jacket, and repeatedly make that point clear despite the rest of the game continuing teasing the player.^[14] The masked figures also foreshadow upcoming events in the game's narrative. For example, after the player kills Biker, Richard warns Jacket that he will be "all alone soon." Shortly after, Jacket and his girlfriend are shot by Richter, and Jacket wakes up from a coma months later.^[11][12] Contrarily to the masked personas, the group of janitors that operate 50 Blessings attempt to justify the massacres the player commits, with one stating that "they were all scum anyway, weren’t they?"^[12]

The differing behavior of the masked figures were noted by Luca Papale and Lorenzo Fazio to possibly represent a dissociative identity disorder in Jacket.^[5] Similar thoughts were written by Marco Caracciolo of the University of Groningen, who believed that the masked personas to possibly be "projections of Jacket’s disturbed psyche." He additionally wrote that the games plot is 'destined not to make any sense", citing the behavior of the masked figures as well as the contradictions between the perspectives of Jacket and the Biker.^[14] Papale and Fazio considered Jacket to be an example of the first example of a "meta-avatar", a type of character with the ability to cause players to rethink their own actions and cause instability within their identity.^[5] This type of character was compared to Doomguy from the DOOM series and Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series, both of which were considered to fall under "mask digital prosthesis", which refers to the overlapping of identities between a player and a game's protagonist.^[5]

Development

 

Designer and programmer Jonatan Söderström at the Game Developers Conference in 2010

Hotline Miami was developed by Dennaton Games, a team composed of designer and programmer Jonatan Söderström and artist Dennis Wedin.^[15] Söderström had previously developed numerous freeware indie games, such as the puzzle game Tuning,^[16] which won the Nuovo Award at the Independent Games Festival in 2010.^[17] Around this time, he developed numerous projects that went unfinished and never got released, which he put in a group known as the "unfinished and unreleased box". Among these was a top-down shooter tilted Super Carnage, a game where the goal was to kill as many people as possible. He began development of Super Carnage in 2004 at the age of 18, but abandoned the project after facing difficulties with developing the game's AI.^[18] Years later, Söderström met Wedin, a singer and keyboard player for the metal band Fucking Werewolf Asso. The two collaborated in making a promotional game based on the band, titled Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf, as well as a separate project named Life/Death/Island. The latter became too much work for them to handle, and the project was abandoned. Following this, the two experienced financial difficulties and decided their next game would be a commercial release. Wedin began searching through Söderström's unfinished projects, and came across the Super Carnage project.^[18] Seeing potential in the concept, the two began developing Hotline Miami. It was originally named Cocaine Cowboy, named after the 2006 documentary of the same name.^[18][19]

The game was developed using the GameMaker engine over the course of nine months.^[18] Uncertain on whether or not the game would be successful, combined with developing the game with little to no budget, the team repeatedly lost and regained motivation. In an interview with Edge Wedin described the development of the game as "fucking hard".^[18] During the game's development, Wedin faced issues with his mental health following a break up, and was hospitalized for two weeks.^[20] Due to being developed with an outdated version of GameMaker that had compatibility issues with newer operating systems, Dennaton faced numerous strange problems while developing the game, dealing with various bugs reported by playtesters. One of these bugs was one that would cause the game to crash if certain printers were plugged into the players computer. The team also faced difficulties with developing the game's AI, conflicted on whether to make it more "believable" or to intentionally make it varied in behavior. The team chose the latter.^[18]

Before they began development on the game, the team watched numerous movies to use as inspiration for its writing. Among these were the works of David Lynch, the superhero comedy film Kick-Ass (2010), the Miami-oriented aforementioned documentary Cocaine Cowboys, and Drive (2010).^[18][21] In an interview, Söderström described that Lynch's work left the largest influence overall. From Drive in particular, Söderström was a fan of the film's minimal dialogue and critique of violence. The latter left Söderström wanting to create a game that had similar aspects. This led to the creation of Hotline Miami's masked personas and the scenes they appear in.^[18] The character Beard was based on artist Niklas Åkerblad, a friend of Dennaton and the owner of the apartment the two developed the game in.^[22] Other inspirations that impacted the games narrative include Gordon Freeman, the silent protagonist of the Half-Life series.^[21]

Music

The soundtrack of Hotline Miami consists of tracks from various artists, most of which feature heavy use of synths.^[19][23] Early on in the game's development, Dennaton had concluded that they did not want the soundtrack of Hotline Miami to sound "like game music", and instead wanted it to "sound like a movie soundtrack." They had assembled a temporary soundtrack, though failed to acquire the licenses to use the tracks they had put together. The team then turned to searching Bandcamp for tracks that were free to download, and came across composer M.O.O.N., while other artists such as Scattle found out about the project via blog posts when it was still titled Cocaine Cowboy. Tracks from M.O.O.N. were directly added to the game, while Scattle was tasked with composing unique music inspired by movies with the aesthetic Hotline Miami was based on using Renoise.^[19] Alongside them, Dennaton licensed additional music from other artists directly, such as Coconuts and Sun Araw,^[23] and artists such as Åkerblad (under the alias "El Huervo") made direct contributions themselves.^[24]

Marketing and release

During the development of Hotline Miami, the game development studio Vlambeer submitted a demo of the game to Devolver Digital after they expressed interest in Dennaton's work. Upon Devolver receiving the copy of the game, members such as co-founder Graeme Struthers found the game to be enjoyable, and a deal was made to publish the game. They presented it at the Rezzed exposition in Brighton,^[18] where it was praised by attendees, being the most played game at the expo and winning the Game Of The Show award; Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer described the game as the "best example of the sort of game we invented the show for."^[25] For the game's promotion, Dennaton purchased a phone number in the Miami area that allowed people to leave messages that would later be used in the game's trailer.^[26] Hotline Miami released on Steam on 23 October 2012.^[27] Support for MacOS and Linux released on 19 March and 19 September respectively in 2013.^[28][29] The game's box art was designed by Åkerblad.^[22]

An update released in early November 2012 fixed numerous bugs, added support for gamepads, and made minor adjustments to graphics and gameplay. This update also added a bonus level known as "Highball", which has no relation to any other levels in the game.^[30] Alongside this update, Söderström developed numerous patches for pirated versions of Hotline Miami after several users of The Pirate Bay reported issues with the game, stating that he wanted players to "experience the game the way it's meant to be experienced", regardless of whether they bought the game or pirated it.^[31] The game's soundtrack was released via Steam in January 2013.^[32]

Versions of Hotline Miami for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita released on 25 July 2013 in North America, and a day later in Europe. These ports were handled by Abstraction Games, and supported cross-buy, allowing players who purchased the game on one platform to receive it on the other.^[33][34] These ports also added a bonus mask, leaderboards, and touchscreen support on Vita.^[34] A version for PlayStation 4, also supporting cross-buy, released on 19 August 2014.^[35][36] A Japan-localized compilation, featuring Hotline Miami alongside its sequel Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, titled Hotline Miami: Collected Edition, was released in June 2015.^[37] On 19 August 2019, Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2 were re-released as part of the Hotline Miami Collection for Nintendo Switch.^[38] The Hotline Miami Collection was later ported to Xbox One and Stadia on 7 April and 22 September 2020 respectively,^[39][40] and PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on 23 October 2023.^[41]

Reception

Critical reception

Reception

Aggregate score

Aggregator	Score
Metacritic	(PC) 85/100^[42] (PS3) 87/100^[42] (Vita) 85/100^[42]

Review scores

Publication	Score
Eurogamer	10/10^[43]
Game Informer	7.75/10^[2]
GameSpot	8.5/10^[4]
GamesRadar+	4/5^[3]
GameTrailers	8.7/10^[44]
IGN	8.8/10^[9]
PC Gamer (US)	86/100^[8]
Polygon	8.5/10^[7]
VideoGamer.com	9/10^[45]
PopMatters	9/10^[46]

Hotline Miami released to generally positive reviews. Metacritic calculated a score of 85 based on 51 reviews for the Windows version, 87 based on 19 reviews on PlayStation 3, and 85 based on 27 reviews on PlayStation Vita.^[42]

The fast-paced gameplay of Hotline Miami was praised. Several reviewers considered the game to be enjoyable despite constant death, with some attributing the enjoyment to the ability to restart quickly;^[2][4][43] Polygon's Chris Plante compared playing the game to be similar to playing a sport,^[7] and Graham Smith of PC Gamer wrote that the game was meant to "inspire a fever."^[8] Citing the game's short length, though still enjoying the game, GameSpot's Danny O'Dwyer compared playing the game to doing cocaine, writing that "like most cocaine-fueled rampages, it's short-lived but memorable."^[4] Some criticisms were made towards the games controls and length, with Ben Reeves of Game Informer writing that the controls inhibited what was otherwise "one of the most creative indie titles of the year".^[2]

The game's atmosphere and art direction were very positively received. Cameron of VideoGamer.com wrote that the atmosphere does "an awfully good job of desensitizing you to the violence".^[45] Smith of PC Gamer praised the game's story for not attempting to give a cliché justification for the player's violence.^[8] Danny O'Dwyer of GameSpot described the game as a "wonderful barrage of the senses".^[4] The atmosphere and violence was not without some criticism however, such as that from Chris Kohler of Wired, who named Hotline Miami the "most disgusting video game of all time".^[47]

The soundtrack was acclaimed across various publications for working with the game's atmosphere. Reeves of Game Informer praised the music, describing it to "perfectly place you inside the mind of a serial killer".^[2] Giancarlo Saldana of GamesRadar+ and Onyett of IGN described the music as "very effective" and "meshing perfectly" respectively.^[3][9]

Awards

Before release, the game was the recipient of both Eurogamer's and Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Game of the Show award at their inaugural EGX Rezzed expo.^[48][49] After release, the game received the "Best PC Sound" accolade by IGN from its "Best of 2012" awards.^[50] It was also nominated for "Best PC Action Game",^[51] "Best PC Story",^[52] "Best PC Game",^[53] "Best Overall Action Game",^[54] "Best Overall Music",^[55] and "Best Overall Game".^[56] PC Gamer awarded the game with "The Best Music of the Year 2012".^[57] At the 2012 Machinima's Inside Gaming Awards, the game received the "Most Original Game" award.^[58][59]

Legacy

Hotline Miami has been considered one of the greatest video games ever made, one of the most influential indie games ever made, and has amassed a cult following.^[60] The success of the game has been linked to the success of Devolver Digital, being considered the publisher's breakout title.^[61] Devolver Digital has gone on to publish many different titles, becoming one of the most influential publishers for indie games.^[62][63] In 2023, TechRadar described Hotline Miami as the "gold standard" of indie games.^[64]

In a retrospective article from Vice's Cameron Kunzelman, he described the anti-violence messages portrayed by Hotline Miami as an "emblem of a forgotten regime." He highlighted its release in a time where he believed violence was used to demonstrate "seriousness" in storytelling, with examples such as the trailer for The Last of Us (2013) where a person's head is shot off with a shotgun. Comparing that to now, where Kunzelman believes the video game industry and critics have become desensitized to violence in video games, he argued that video games were due "another shift" in how violence was treated, and that the original messages of Hotline Miami had been lost.^[13]

In 2012, Söderström and Wedin said they were looking to create downloadable content for Hotline Miami,^[65] which was later expanded to a full sequel.^[66] After being officially announced at E3 in June 2013,^[67] Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number was released for Windows on 10 March 2015.^[68] The sequel received generally lower reviews compared to the first game.^[69] The game was relatively controversial upon its release, and it was subject to a ban in Australia due to its sexual imagery.^[70] In 2019, Dennaton Games denied that a third entry is in development.^[71] An eight-part comic book series published by Behemoth Comics, titled Hotline Miami: Wildlife, was physically distributed to comic book stores and traditional book stores by Simon & Schuster and Diamond Comic Distributors beginning monthly in September 2020 after their initial digital release in 2016.^[72] A parody of Hotline Miami was included in Devolver Bootleg (2019), known as "Hotline Milwaukee", which was a version of the game with simplified movement that gave dogs the ability to use guns.^[73] A figure of Jacket was revealed in 2014, featuring several different masks that could be swapped out.^[74]

Two compilations containing both games in the series have been released, Hotline Miami: Collected Edition and Hotline Miami Collection. Hotline Miami: Collected Edition was released in Japan on 25 June 2015 for the PlayStation 4 and was sold at retail,^[75] while Hotline Miami Collection was released for Nintendo Switch digitally on 19 August 2019,^[76] Xbox One on 7 April 2020,^[77][78] Stadia on 22 September 2020,^[79] and PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on 23 October 2023.^[41] Two limited physical releases of the Hotline Miami Collection were released online by Special Reserve Games in 2020 and 2021.^[80] Several fangames and mods based on the series have been created. The most notorious of these was the controversial Midnight Animal, a Persona inspired mod that was abandoned in 2018 after severe backlash towards the creators' actions.^[81]

Several video games have been inspired either directly or indirectly by Hotline Miami, many from Devolver Digital.^[82] Some of these games include The Hong Kong Massacre (2019),^[82] which itself inspired a scene in John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023).^[83] The game was featured in The Last of Us Part II (2020) as an easter egg.^[84][82] The game has been considered a primary reason for the popularization of synthwave alongside the film Drive.^[85] The game has been involved in several crossovers with other video games, including Payday 2 (2013),^[86] Dead Cells and Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes (2019),^[87][88] and Fall Guys (2020).^[89]

Notes

1. Jacket is a fan-assigned name to an otherwise unnamed protagonist.^[5] The name was adopted by Dennaton themselves afterwards.^[6]
2. Similarly to Jacket, Beard goes unnamed in the game, but is referred to as such elsewhere. In Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, the character is known as The Soldier.^[10]
3. Jacket and the Biker fight each other twice, with both times having a different outcome.^[11] Both are seen alive in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number.

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External links

 

Wikiquote has quotations related to Hotline Miami.

• Official website