Hotline Miami is a 2012 video game created by Dennaton Games and released by Devolver Digital. Set in Miami in 1989, the game follows a silent, unnamed main character called Jacket by fans. Jacket carries out violent attacks against a local Russian mafia group. In each level, players must defeat all enemies using any method available. Players can wear animal masks that give them special abilities. The story shows Jacket losing his grip on reality and being questioned about his actions. The game promotes a message of peace by making players feel regret for their in-game choices.
The game took nine months to create and was Dennaton Games’ first commercial project. The company consists of two developers, Jonatan Söderström and Dennis Wedin. Söderström programmed the game and wrote the story, while Wedin designed the graphics. Many artists helped create the soundtrack, which includes music from different genres such as electronic, techno, vaporwave, and synthwave. Hotline Miami was first released for Windows in October 2012. Later versions were released for OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita in 2013, and a PlayStation 4 version in 2014.
Hotline Miami is often considered one of the greatest and most influential indie games. Early reviews praised its gameplay, music, and atmosphere, though some critics mentioned issues with the controls. The game’s themes and storytelling were also highly praised. It was nominated for many awards and sold 1.5 million copies by May 2015. The game inspired many developers and helped increase the number of indie games released during the 2010s. It also helped Devolver Digital become more successful and increased the popularity of the synthwave music style. A sequel, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, was released in March 2015. The series later expanded into a franchise, including two compilations of the games on platforms like the Nintendo Switch, a comic book adaptation, and several fan-made games.
Gameplay
Hotline Miami is a game where you control a character from above. It takes place in Miami during the late 1980s and is divided into nineteen chapters. At the start of each chapter, the player, named "Jacket," receives a message on an answering machine. The message tells him to go to a different part of Miami and kill all enemies there. The player can defeat enemies using close combat weapons like crowbars or guns that shoot. The player can also use a door to knock enemies unconscious, use them as a shield, or kick them against a wall. If an enemy is not killed right away, the player can do a special move to finish them. In later chapters, the player controls a different character called the Biker, who can only use knives.
Both the player and enemies can be killed with one attack. To help, the player can restart the current stage quickly after dying, allowing them to try a new strategy. Different types of enemies appear, such as dogs and powerful boss characters. Enemies react differently to attacks, sometimes responding immediately and other times doing nothing. The player earns points for killing enemies, with extra points given for how they kill or for killing many enemies quickly. The player can target an enemy without aiming. On the PlayStation Vita, aiming and other mouse functions are moved to the touch screen, and targeting enemies requires touching them on the screen.
Before each chapter starts, the player can choose from different animal masks. These masks give special abilities, such as faster finishing moves or the ability to see farther. At the end of each chapter, the player’s total score is calculated, and they receive a rating based on their performance. The player’s score is also adjusted based on their play style, which is labeled with words like "coward" or "sadist." High scores unlock new masks and weapons. Achievements are earned by completing specific challenges, such as killing two enemies with one throw.
Plot
In April 1989, Jacket receives a message on his answering machine and a package is delivered to his door. The package contains a rooster mask and instructions telling Jacket to retrieve a briefcase from the Russian mafia at a metro station. After completing this task, Jacket continues to receive messages that direct him to carry out more violent attacks. After each mission, he visits a store or restaurant where a man named Beard meets him and gives him free items like pizza, movies, and drinks.
During an attack on a film producer’s estate, Jacket saves a girl and takes her to his apartment. He helps her recover and begins a romantic relationship with her. Later, three masked men named Richard, Rasmus, and Don Juan visit Jacket and question him about his actions. These meetings happen repeatedly throughout the game. In another mission, Jacket attacks a phone company and finds everyone dead except a man named the Biker, who is trying to access a computer. Jacket and the Biker fight until one of them dies.
As Jacket continues his attacks, his view of reality becomes more strange and confusing. Talking corpses appear at Beard’s workplace until Beard dies suddenly. Beard is replaced by a bald man named Richter, who gives Jacket nothing. One night, Jacket returns home and finds his girlfriend murdered by Richter. Richter shoots Jacket and puts him into a coma.
After waking up, Jacket learns from Richard that he had been reliving the past two months while in a coma. He then escapes the hospital to find Richter. Jacket attacks the Miami police headquarters, killing most of the people inside, and confronts Richter. Jacket discovers that Richter had also been receiving messages. Jacket spares Richter’s life, steals a file about police investigations, and goes to a nightclub where the calls were tracked. He kills everyone there before going to the Russian Mafia’s headquarters. There, Jacket fights two leaders. One leader kills himself after Jacket injures him and kills his bodyguard. The other leader allows Jacket to kill him without fighting. Jacket then walks onto a balcony, lights a cigarette, and throws a photo off the balcony.
After completing Jacket’s story, the player unlocks an ending focused on the Biker. Like Jacket, the Biker has been receiving messages and is trying to find their source. After meeting Jacket and other characters, the Biker discovers that the messages come from a group called 50 Blessings, run by two janitors. This group tries to stop an "anti-American" alliance between the Soviet Union and the United States by sending messages to kill Russians. To learn the group’s secrets, the player must find puzzle pieces scattered in the game to unlock a password. If the password is found, the Biker uncovers the group’s plans. If not, the Biker fails to learn the truth. In both endings, the player can choose to kill or spare the janitors. After this, the Biker leaves Miami.
Development
Hotline Miami was created by Dennaton Games, a team made up of Jonatan Söderström, a Swedish game designer and programmer, and Dennis Wedin, an artist. Söderström had made many free games before, including a puzzle game called Tuning, which won the Nuovo Award at the Independent Games Festival in 2010. Some of his earlier projects were not finished. One of these was a top-down shooter named Super Carnage, where the goal was to kill as many enemies as possible. He started working on it in 2004 when he was 18 years old but stopped later because he had trouble making the game's artificial intelligence (AI) work properly.
Later, Söderström met Wedin, who was a singer and keyboard player for a band called Fucking Werewolf Asso. Together, they made a promotional game for the band called Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf and another project named Life/Death/Island. Life/Death/Island became too difficult to complete, so they abandoned it. After this, the two decided to make a game they could sell to the public. Wedin looked through Söderström's unfinished projects and found Super Carnage. He thought the idea had potential, especially after playing similar games like Gauntlet (1985) and Chaos Engine (1993). They began developing Hotline Miami, which was first called Cocaine Cowboy, named after a 2006 documentary. Söderström shared updates about the game on his Twitter account and blog during development.
The first playable version of the game was made within the first week of development after Söderström created the basic elements, including a temporary soundtrack. The game was made using the GameMaker engine and took nine months to complete. The developers worked 12 hours a day, six days a week. After a game studio called Vlambeer shared a demo with Devolver Digital, who offered to publish the game, the scope of the project grew. The team faced challenges, including uncertainty about the game's success and a lack of money. Wedin described the development as "fucking hard" in an interview with Edge. At one point, Wedin was hospitalized for two weeks due to depression from a breakup. Problems with the outdated version of GameMaker caused compatibility issues with newer operating systems and strange bugs, such as one that would crash the game if certain printers were connected to the player's computer.
In a 2022 interview with Noclip, Wedin said the team made Hotline Miami as a game they wanted to play, without worrying about what critics or average players might think. They believed this helped them decide what players would enjoy based on whether they personally found the game fun. They also said they designed the game to feel like an arcade game first and a reality simulator second. When designing the AI, the team debated whether to make it more realistic or varied in behavior but chose the latter. Wedin said they never wanted the AI to act realistically, and Söderström said the limitations of GameMaker contributed to the enemies' varied behavior. Some game mechanics, like throwing weapons at enemies, were originally coding mistakes that became official features. The levels featuring the Biker were created near the end of development.
The game's story was inspired by movies the team watched, including works by David Lynch, the superhero comedy film Kick-Ass (2010), the Cocaine Cowboys documentary, and the movie Drive (2011). The team was also influenced by Gordon Freeman, the silent main character in the Half-Life series. Söderström said Lynch's work had the biggest influence, while Drive inspired the game's minimal dialogue and critique of violence. This led to the creation of the masked characters and their scenes. In a June 2012 blog post, Söderström said he wanted the story to be interesting but not too intrusive, allowing players to skip it if they wanted. Some characters were based on real people, like Beard, who was inspired by artist Niklas Åkerblad, a friend of the developers and the owner of the apartment where they worked. The janitors in the game were based on the developers themselves.
The game's graphics were created by Wedin using pixel art with a high-contrast color palette. The first images, including the player and enemy characters, were made by Wedin during a weekend early in development. The team believed the use of pixel art would help reduce controversy about the game's violent content. Wedin said that games with realistic 3D graphics often faced more attention after real-world events, but Hotline Miami's pixel art kept it "out of the spotlight." When looking for artists to design the box art, the team initially sought artists who had worked on older horror films. After disagreements, Åkerblad offered to create the box art himself, completing it in about three days.
The soundtrack was a key focus for the developers, who wanted it to sound like a film score rather than a typical video game soundtrack. After failing to get licenses for a temporary soundtrack they created early in development, the team searched Bandcamp for free tracks. Söderström said they listened to up to 2,000 tracks. Some artists, like M.O.O.N., were found this way, while another artist, Scattle, contacted Dennaton after seeing blog posts about the game. Tracks from M.O.O.N. were added directly, while Scattle was asked to create original music using Renoise. Other artists involved include Coconuts, Sun Araw, Perturbator, and Åkerblad. The final soundtrack has 22 tracks with different styles, ranging from bass and drum-heavy songs like "Hydrogen" to upbeat pop tracks like "Miami Disco" by Perturbator. The music includes genres such as electronic, techno, vaporwave, and synthwave.
Release
Hotline Miami was first announced on Söderström's personal blog on July 3, 2012. A teaser trailer was shared at the same time. The game was later displayed at the A Maze Indie Connect festival and again at a Rezzed event in Brighton. While some people at A Maze had mixed feelings about it, attendees at Rezzed later praised the game. It was the most played game at Rezzed and won the Game Of The Show award. Tom Bramwell from Eurogamer called it "the best example of the sort of game we invented the show for." Dennaton bought a phone number in the Miami area to collect messages for use in a trailer. Hotline Miami was released on Steam on October 23, 2012. Versions for MacOS and Linux were released on March 19, 2013, and September 9, 2013, respectively.
In November 2012, an update fixed many bugs, added support for gamepads, and made small changes to the game's graphics and gameplay. This update also included a bonus level called "Highball." Söderström created patches for pirated versions of the game after users on Pirate Bay reported problems. He wanted players to "experience the game the way it's meant to be experienced," whether they obtained it legally or not. The game's soundtrack was released through Steam in January 2013. A physical version, with all tracks pressed on three vinyl records, was released in 2016 by Laced Records. This was a limited release with only 5,000 copies, funded by a Kickstarter campaign that collected more than $75,000.
Versions for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita, developed by Abstraction Games, were released on July 25, 2013, in North America and the next day in Europe. These versions supported cross-buy, allowing players who bought the game on one platform to receive it on the other. These ports added a bonus mask and leaderboards. A PlayStation 4 version, also supporting cross-buy, was released on August 19, 2014. A Japan-localized compilation, including Hotline Miami and its sequel Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015), titled Hotline Miami: Collected Edition, was released in June 2015. On August 19, 2019, Hotline Miami and its sequel were re-released as part of the Hotline Miami Collection for Nintendo Switch. The collection was later released on Xbox One and Stadia on April 7 and September 22, 2020, respectively, and on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 23, 2023.
Reception
Hotline Miami received mostly positive reviews from critics. On Metacritic, a website that collects reviews, the game has an average score of 85% based on 51 reviews for the PC version, 87% based on 19 reviews for the PlayStation 3 version, and 85% based on 27 reviews for the PlayStation Vita version.
Many reviewers liked the gameplay. They said it was fun and easy to get hooked, even though players often died. Chris Plante of Polygon compared playing the game to playing a sport, saying the game allowed players to restart quickly, which made it addictive. Graham Smith of PC Gamer wrote that the game was made to "inspire a fever" and that it was easy to get carried away once players started playing. He also said the game was well-designed and efficient. Phill Cameron of VideoGamer.com called the gameplay "five seconds of action that you can lose yourself in for five hours." Danny O'Dwyer of GameSpot said the game had some frustrating parts, like boss fights that had unclear ways to beat them.
Some critics said the controls were not ideal. Ben Reeves of Game Informer wrote that the controls limited what was otherwise a creative game. Eric Swain of PopMatters said the PlayStation 3 controls made the game easier, which might have changed the experience. Giancarlo Saldana of GamesRadar+ said the PlayStation 3 controls took time to get used to and that playing on a computer was better.
The game's story was praised by many. Reeves said the story helped players feel like they were inside the mind of a serial killer. Saldana called it an "introspective journey into the violence of video games" with a unique storytelling style. Plante said the game had more to say about why people are fascinated with violence than other games. Smith said the story lacked depth and did not explain the violence, but he thought it was better than other games that used clichéd reasons for violence. Cameron said the game missed a chance to make a point and did not explain why so many people were being killed. The game's visual design was also praised for working well with the story and sound.
The soundtrack was highly praised by critics. Reeves said the music did a "phenomenal job," and Saldana said it was "executed perfectly." O'Dwyer called the music "outstanding" and said it worked well with the visuals. Charles Onyett of IGN said the music "meshes perfectly" with the game. Tom Brawell of Eurogamer said the music was not as strong on its own but worked well with other parts of the game.
Hotline Miami sold over 130,000 copies in seven weeks. By February 2013, when the PlayStation 3 version was announced, it had sold 300,000 copies. Sony wanted the game on PlayStation 3 because of its success, which helped the company keep its reputation for supporting indie games. When the game was released on PlayStation Vita, it became the best-selling game on that platform in June 2013 within six days. By May 2015, the game had sold over 1.5 million copies across all platforms.
A month before its release, Hotline Miami won the "Most Fantastic" award at the 2012 Fantastic Arcade festival. At the end of 2012, it was nominated for several awards by IGN, including "Best Overall Game" and "Best PC Action Game," but only won "Best PC Sound." PC Gamer gave it the "Best Music of the Year 2012" award. It also won the "Most Original Game" award at the 2012 Machinima Inside Gaming Awards. The game was nominated for several awards at the Independent Games Festival in 2013, including the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Many publications, such as Kill Screen, Paste, Ars Technica, Wired, The Guardian, and VentureBeat, listed Hotline Miami as one of the best games of 2012.
Themes and analysis
The game Hotline Miami sends a message against violence by making players feel guilty for the violent actions they take in the game. Some people believe this happens because the game uses upbeat music and a scoring system to keep players engaged. The fast-paced gameplay can cause players to focus only on their actions and become less sensitive to the violence they are causing. According to Nina Corcoran of Pitchfork, the upbeat music increases players' anxiety and focus while also making them less sensitive to the violent scenes. After each level, the music changes to calm sounds as players leave the scene, where they can see the remains of enemies left behind. Dom Peppiatt of NME compared Hotline Miami's message about violence to the films A Clockwork Orange (1971) and American Psycho (1991). He wrote that the game makes players think about how the line between fiction and reality can become unclear and encourages them to reconsider how violence is shown in video games.
Each of the masked characters in the game has a specific role during their interactions with the player. Richard is curious, Don Juan is calm and friendly, and Rasmus is aggressive. Each character is also assigned a color that reflects their personality: yellow for Richard, blue for Don Juan, and red for Rasmus. The characters ask the player different types of questions. For example, Don Juan says, "knowing oneself means acknowledging one's actions," while Richard directly asks, "do you like hurting other people?" The masked figures never explain who Jacket is, but instead tease the player. They also hint at future events in the story, such as the murder of Jacket's girlfriend.
Luca Papale and Lorenzo Fazio suggested that the different behaviors of the masked characters might represent a mental condition called dissociative identity disorder in Jacket. Marco Caracciolo of the University of Groningen wrote that the masked characters could be "projections of Jacket's disturbed mind." He also said the story is confusing, pointing to the strange behavior of the masked figures and the differences in how Jacket and the Biker see events. Papale and Fazio described Jacket as the first example of a "meta-avatar," a type of character that makes players question their own actions and causes uncertainty about their identity. They compared Jacket to characters like Doomguy from the Doom series and Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series, who are described as "mask digital prosthesis," meaning they show how a player's identity can overlap with the identity of a game's main character.
Legacy
Hotline Miami has been called one of the most important indie games ever made. It was very successful in both reviews and sales. Its success encouraged many people to become video game developers, which led to more indie games being made during the 2010s. Many of these games share similar themes, gameplay, or music with Hotline Miami. Games inspired by Hotline Miami continued to be created for over ten years after its release, including games made by larger studios like Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part II (2020). The game's soundtrack helped popularize a music style called synthwave and brought attention to the artists featured in it. It also helped Devolver Digital become one of the most successful indie game publishers.
Hotline Miami's story and how it handles violence have been seen as important in the video game industry, with effects lasting into the 2020s. In a 2019 article, Cameron Kunzelman of Vice described Hotline Miami's anti-violence themes as part of a trend that included games like Spec Ops: The Line. He noted that after Hotline Miami's release, more games began showing violence as a way to show "seriousness" without clear reasons. He pointed to a trailer for The Last of Us Part II and how some of Hotline Miami's dialogue became internet memes. He also said the industry needed to change how it handles violence. In 2024, Chris Tapsell of Eurogamer called Hotline Miami a key moment for the video game industry, describing it as a time for reflection.
In 2023, Aleksha McLoughlin of TechRadar called Hotline Miami the "gold standard" for indie games, saying it was the best in its category. Nina Corcoran of Pitchfork noted that the game remained fun to play years after its release. Lewis Gordon of The Ringer said Hotline Miami pushed the boundaries of the industry and was widely respected. Christopher Cruz of Rolling Stone called it a major achievement in indie gaming with a wide-reaching impact. The game has also gained a strong fan following.
Hotline Miami has been named one of the best video games by many publications, including GamesRadar+, Slant Magazine, Hardcore Gaming 101, Stuff.tv, Popular Mechanics, GamesTM, USA Today, and Sports Illustrated. It was also called one of the best PC games by PC Gamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and one of the best PlayStation Vita games by Digital Trends and GamesRadar+. It was listed in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. Writers from Paste, GameSpot, PCMag, and VG247 praised its soundtrack as one of the best in video game history.
After Hotline Miami's release, the developers began creating extra content to expand the story and add a level editor. When this project became longer than the main game, it became a separate game called Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, which was released on March 10, 2015. This game introduced new characters and focused on the events after the main story. It also ended the series' story. However, it was not as well received as the first game. Both games were included in the Hotline Miami Collection, released in August 2019. By 2022, both games had sold over five million copies combined. In 2025, Devolver Digital reported that Hotline Miami was its seventh most profitable game, earning over $30 million in total revenue.
An eight-part comic book series called Hotline Miami: Wildlife was announced in 2016. It was released digitally and followed a character named Chris, whose story was not part of the main game. A parody called Hotline Milwaukee was included in Devolver Bootleg, a 2019 collection of game parodies. The character Jacket from Hotline Miami has appeared in other games like Payday 2 and Dead Cells. Many fan-made games based on the series have been created, often including elements from other games like Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life. One such game, Midnight Animal, was planned to include parts from the Persona series but was canceled by 2019.