Spontaneous Sunday - Hotline Miami

Spontaneous Sunday is here again, and this week I have played another well-known indie game: Hotline Miami (2012, Denton Games, OS X). This is the next stop in my quest to broaden my indie game knowledge!

"Hotline Miami is a top-down shooter video game by Jonatan Söderström and Dennis Wedin. The game was published by Devolver Digital and released on 23 October 2012 for Microsoft Windows. Set in 1989 Miami, the plot consists of two protagonists, Jacket and Biker, who have been receiving phone calls instructing them to commit massacres against the local Russian Mafia. The game blends top down perspective with stealth, extreme violence and surreal storytelling, along with a soundtrack and visuals influenced by 1980s culture."

- Wikipedia on Hotline Miami

What do I expect from the game?

Like last week's game, Limbo, Hotline Miami is a critically acclaimed and popular indie game which I have heard mentioned many times, so I bought it cheap during the Steam Summer sale. Based on what I have seen and heard about the game, I expect it to be a high-energy action game with fast-paced and intense gameplay. As it was created by a two-man team, and is only about 500 MB in size, I expect that it will be a relatively small-scale game with fairly simple visuals. I expect that the art style and overall 80's-inspired aesthetic will be one of its strongest features as this appears to be the main talking point about the game, aswell as the music which I have heard good things about. I also expect the story to be another positive point.

Hotline Miami was created in the GameMaker engine, which is a somewhat simplified 2D game creation engine. I don't believe I've ever played anything from this engine before, but I've read a bit about it and it seems like something I could see myself using for my own projects sometime, so hopefully playing Hotline Miami will help me to get an idea of what the software is capable of.

First Impressions - What do I think of the game in its first few minutes?

Hotline Miami's front end throws the player right into the deep end of its distinct visual style and aesthetic. The main menu is quite psychedelic, with blocky pixel art text that sways around lazily and a musical accompaniment that sounds like slowed-down surf-rock with trippy vocals. The biggest bit of text on the main menu actually seems to be in Russian - the intro is unique in a way that only an indie game could get away with. It's definitely a striking introduction to the game.

Starting a new game leads the player to a short tutorial that takes place in a series of small darkened rooms, narrated by an unknown, rough-looking individual. He instructs the player on how to attack enemies, finish them, pick up and use weapons and control the camera. This as-yet unnamed character doesn't mince his words, and he also breaks the 4th wall, addressing the player directly when instructing them on controls. The tutorial effectively introduces the concise handful of mechanics that go on to make up the majority of gameplay.

Next, the player enters a darkened room and is faced with 3 characters, wearing masks. The characters respond strangely to the player-character's presence. In some short dialogue, the chicken-mask wearing character asks the player if they remember April the 3rd. The player is then transported to their apartment on April the 3rd, 1989, where they receive a phone call stating that "the cookies they ordered have arrived". Upon opening a package outside the apartment door, the player finds that it contains instructions for a hitman job. The player goes downstairs to their car, then arrives at the location and the game gets properly under way.

The first level is a short job in which the player has to enter a metro, kill a bunch of enemies and retrieve a briefcase. The gameplay of navigating levels and defeating enemies is actually rather tricky and has an interesting dynamic to it. To defeat an enemy, you must either kill them instantly by using a weapon, or you can knock them down with melee attacks or by throwing a weapon then "finish" them before they get back up. Meanwhile, enemies rush the player and can kill them with one hit if they enter their line of sight. This means that careful movement and well-timed attacks are the key to success. The first level took me 5 or 6 attempts.

After the level, I was presented with a score and number of stats on my performance. This simple addition of post-level stats no doubt help the player to gauge their performance, while also adding replayability and creating a dialogue between the player and the game. Between each murderous level, there is a short segment in which the player completes a comparatively mundane task, such as pickup up a pizza or a VHS tape. The player talks to the cashiers of these shops, who make comments about the player character which give an insight into the character's life and begin to form an intriguing backstory.

The non-combat sections help add small details to the story.

My initial reaction to the in-game visuals was that they are not particularly sophisticated in their retro pixel style, but they are still effective at portraying what they need to portray and they do create a certain retro vibe which gels nicely with the game's strong 80's setting and style. The music was also instantly appealing. By the end of the 3rd level or so, I had gotten the hang of the game's surprisingly demanding gameplay, and was a rather proficient contract killer, if I do say so myself. I was drawn in by the simple-yet-skilful gameplay and the slowly-developing backstory.

What do I like about the game?

Hotline Miami is another interesting and unique indie game that has a lot to offer and a lot of positive points. The game's greatest strengths lie in its visuals and aesthetic, its gameplay and its music. Hotline Miami has a lot of personality and I can say with certainty that I've not played anything quite like it, which seems to have been the case with the other indie titles that I played for the last two Spontaneous Sundays - I think I see a pattern emerging that indie games are generally more unique than AAA titles (a bold claim, and definitely open to argument!). 

The game's visuals are one of its most immediately appealing elements. I do not claim to be the biggest fan of pixel art styles, but I can certainly appreciate them and I understand that using a pixel art style can help to keep game sizes low and is less demanding on the skills, time and budget of indie developers. Indie developers often use pixel art styles for quicker production times, smaller file sizes and more convenient development - one could see this as something that holds indie games back, but I believe that the best game pixel art games are able to use it to their advantage and create a strong aesthetic using it. Hotline Miami definitely pulls this off. The game is colourful, almost to the point of being intentionally gaudy, which works in its favour by helping the visuals to stand out and create a specific, 80's-inspired aesthetic. The UI and menus are also consistent with the visual style, using pixel-art text and lots of striking cyan and pink colours. At times the art can even look a bit crude, but it still works just fine. Everything about the game's visuals adds to the overall experience.

The levels can descend into ultra-violent bloodbaths!

Hotline Miami's gameplay is another positive feature. The levels generally follow the same basic pattern of entering a building and killing all of the enemies while making sure not to die yourself. The levels are not huge and can generally be completed in 5-15 minutes, but they are invariably interestingly designed and challenging. The game slowly gradually offers up new challenges as it progresses, including greater numbers of more heavily-armed enemies, guard dogs and doors booby-trapped with explosives, which keep the action interesting. Though the goal is always the same, the player can approach the levels in a different way, and they are able to choose their approach based on which play style they are best at. This injects a bit of strategy and tactical thinking into the game. There is also a good dose of stealth in the game, such as having to avoid entering enemy's line of sight and favouring melee weapons so enemies don't hear you. The player scores points for completing actions, which are added to a final post-level point tally based on things such as time taken and "boldness". As the player earns points, they unlock new weapons that become available in the levels. There is even a high-score table for each level, so the player can see how they compare to other players. This adds a new dimension to the game, increasing replayability and adding a social element.

The player can also unlock new animal masks, which grant different abilities that don't sound too significant at first - things such as adding more guns to the levels or increasing melee damage - but they can really switch up how levels play out and how the player must approach them. I personally favoured the horse mask which made it so that knocking an enemy down by opening a door into them was an insta-kill, and my play style adapted to use this effectively. The masks also allow players to "own" their play style and quite literally put a face to it. They also add replay value by providing opportunities for different playthroughs with different masks.

The music can be described as somewhere between 8-bit retro electronic, surf-rock and psychedelic genres - and it stood out to me instantly because of how different it is and how it moulds and elevates the game's mood. Though the music has little in common with actual 80's music, it somehow suits the 80's setting very well. The game features a number of songs from real musical acts and its soundtrack has become one of its major selling points and most popular features. As the game was made by just two developers, I imagine that this enabled them to choose the music with minimal disruption, allowing them to perfectly capture their vision for the game's atmosphere through the music. This is a fine example of how the freedoms afforded by indie development can make for some very unique and personal games that simply couldn't have been made by larger, non-indie developers. The game's soundtrack is one of the main reasons that the package as a whole comes across so well - I think that without it, the game may have struggled to stand out as much as it did.

Another positive feature is the way that the game delivers its story. The intermittent non-combat segments, in which the player visits groceries stores, pizza parlours and so on, give both a welcome break from the intense ultra-violent gameplay and an opportunity for the game to throw in some story elements. Also, newspaper clippings appear in the player-character's apartment every so often with commentary on the violent acts that the player commits in the game's levels. Occasionally, the player will be transported to the room with the 3 masked characters, who will make strange comments and questions to them. As the game continued, I began to think that these characters were figments of the player-character's imagination. I suppose I will have to play on to find out if this theory is correct!

What do I not like?

Hotline Miami is a game of many positive features, but there's also a handful of minor negative points to it aswell. Most of the negatives come in the form of missed opportunities or things that I think should have been present in the game, rather than problems with the things that are present. Firstly, I think that it would have been interesting for their to be more different enemy types. I encountered many of the same basic human enemy, a few dogs and one boss-type enemy. The addition of a few more enemy types would make for more varied challenges and level designs.

The game's levels do not have any level art outside of the immediate playable area, instead showing just a background that slowly changes colour. This struck me as a missed opportunity because the game's 80's Miami setting is a big part of its appeal, but this setting sometimes struggles to come through in the level art. I think that having visible roads, buildings, vehicles, palm trees and other classic Miami features visible outside the playable area could have helped to tie the whole setting together and make it more believable. However, I do have mixed feelings about this. There's a chance that the level art might clutter the visuals and distract the player from the action in the level itself. Also, additional level art would have meant a greater workload for the developers and a larger file size for the game.

Final Thoughts

Hotline Miami definitely deserves its status as a cult video game and go-to indie title thanks to its fresh aesthetic, simple but challenging gameplay and its strong soundtrack made up of interesting songs. The retro-inspired visuals and pixel art style work well to create a visual experience that stands out. The gameplay premise is to-the-point but actually surprisingly challenging and layered when played. And, of course, the soundtrack somehow suits the game perfectly and ties the whole thing together nicely. I can definitely see why this game turned heads when it came out, even just due to all the things that it does in a way that no other game really has.

Before playing Hotline Miami, I set out to gauge the capabilities of the GameMaker game engine, to see what it could achieve. I am definitely very interested in having a go of the software myself and will look into doing so soon. As for Hotline Miami itself, I think the game has hooked me and I will be playing it again very soon!