Developed by White Owls Inc. and published by Cult Games as an exciting collaboration between famous game developers Suda51 and Swery65, ‘Hotel Barcelona’ is a 2.5D side-scrolling, dungeon-crawling, RPG game that is both somehow creepy and charming. Filling a void I had in a time while I wait for certain other titles, this was one game that pleasantly surprised me.

In a world of special children with special blood, you play as a Federal Marshal, Justine, involved in a car accident under very obscure circumstances, leading you to Hotel Barcelona. Possessed by a Serial Killer of the most grotesque kind, it is now your job to eradicate a nest of the most evil criminals that have converged on this very hotel. With each boss designed similarly to popular cultural horror icons, the story is full of gnarly, graphical violence of the insane anime kind.

With an actual warning of violence, sexual content, and depictions of self-harm and suicide at the beginning, this tale would appear overwhelming, but it’s actually creative; full of wild plot twists of pacts, witches, and other crazy turns. It’s very fun despite the graphical content.

The gameplay is very familiar to another one of my favourite games, ‘Cult Of The Lamb’, so I was ecstatic to dive into something with similarity. You dive into a stage, each a unique environment, and in each stage, there are levels of rooms you must traverse within a time limit to reach the boss. Before dropping into the starting level, you must decide your difficulty, weapons, guns, and outfit, and the game will decide the time of day and weather conditions that will affect the monster types in that run.

From there, you must use a range of melee attacks, gunfire, and a combination of jump and pound attacks to fight a range of impressive minion enemies as you carve your way to the boss room. The gameplay is very exhilarating and fluid once you get a rhythm going.

What makes this game more unique, though, and sets it apart, is the use of slasher phantoms and dopplegangers. A shadow of your previous run that can help fight mosts and can even come into boss fights with you to lay down some phantom damage if the enemy gets close enough.

Doppelgangers invade other people’s games, adding another layer of difficulty. You can also summon a super ultimate as you bathe in the blood splatter of your enemies, waking up the serial killer within. They really are innovative mechanics.

There is a hub world to get organised in the face of the actual hotel itself, where you can buy weapons, skill tree upgrades, and bondage. Bondages are nerfs used to make the game harder on yourself. Challenges, if you will. There is a range of currencies to use in these places, which is probably the messiest aspect, despite the blood in an already very tight game. It can be confusing what you need each type for as you collect them from minion bodies.

The game is an incredibly interesting overstimulation of the senses. With lots of flashing elements, there is a warning for anyone with photo sensitivity, but not only that, the colour palette itself is an explosion of contrasting acid bright colours on moody dark backgrounds.

Each environment drips charm and charisma of ’80s horror movies and the insane multimodal media style of cutscenes, as they jump from cartoon animations to grainy video to shocking, bold writing, is a bombastic trip visually. In the madness, I don’t know where to look half the time, and I live for it.

The voice acting complements the visuals well with over-the-top, brilliant voice work and dialogue delivery. Our main protagonists, Justine and Dr Carniva, definitely steal the show, but even the supports add so much depth to the story. My personal favourite character, Tim, the monster in the closet, really makes for an enjoyable interaction. The music itself is memorable too; atmospheric but hype inducing. From out of the gate, metal music blasts out as you take on the first baseball bat-wielding boss, making some impact from the very get-go.

With a tight, obscurely unique story and addictive gameplay, I can easily recommend this title to anyone not put off by its mature themes and gore. This is one project White Owls should be truly proud of, and I can’t wait to see what is produced in future collaborations.

Written by: Stacey