Hotline Miami

Hotline Miami is a top-down shooter game. It is set in Miami during the late 1980s, and is divided into nineteen "chapters". At the beginning of each chapter, the player character "Jacket" receives a message on his answering machine, instructing him to travel to a different part of Miami and kill all enemies at that location. The player is able to defeat their opponents through a variety of melee and ranged weapons, like crowbars and firearms.

The player can also knock out enemies with a door, use them as human shields, or kick them against a wall. If an enemy is not immediately killed in an attack, the player can perform a specialized attack to finish them off. Later stages have the player take control of a different character, known as the Biker, who can only use knives.

In April 1989, Jacket receives a message on his answering machine and a package is delivered to his door containing a rooster mask. The package contains instructions advising Jacket to retrieve a briefcase from the Russian mafia at a metro station. After carrying out the mission, Jacket continues to receive messages instructing him to conduct more massacres. After each mission, he visits a store or restaurant where a man known as Beard meets him and gives him 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. Afterward, he is visited by three masked personas: Richard, Rasmus, and Don Juan, who question him about his actions. These encounters continue throughout the game. In another assault on a phone company, Jacket finds everybody dead except the Biker, who is trying to access a computer, and the two fight to the death.

Hotline Miami was developed by Dennaton Games, a duo composed of Swedish designer and programmer Jonatan Söderström and artist Dennis Wedin. Söderström had previously developed numerous freeware indie games, such as the puzzle game Tuning, which won the Nuovo Award at the Independent Games Festival in 2010. Many of his earlier projects were never completed. Among these was a top-down shooter called Super Carnage, where the goal was to kill as many people as possible. He began work on it in 2004 at the age of 18, but later abandoned it after facing difficulties with developing the AI.

Years later, Söderström met Wedin, a singer and keyboard player for the synthpunk band Fucking Werewolf Asso. The two collaborated in making a promotional game for the band, titled Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf, as well as a separate project named Life/Death/Island. As the latter project became too much work for them to handle, it was abandoned. Following the project's failure, the two decided that their next project was going to be a commercial release.

Hotline Miami received generally positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Metacritic, it holds an aggregate score of 85 per cent based on 51 reviews for the PC version, 87 per cent based on 19 reviews for the PlayStation 3 version, and 85 per cent based on 27 reviews for the PlayStation Vita version.

Several reviewers praised the gameplay. Many found it enjoyable, considering it addictive despite frequent death. Polygon's Chris Plante considered it similar to playing a sport, stating that it compensated for being repetitive by allowing the player to restart quickly, and found it addictive. Graham Smith of PC Gamer wrote that the game was designed to "inspire a fever" and that "once you're hooked, it's easy to get carried away".

Retrospective commentary has considered Hotline Miami to be one of the most influential indie games ever made, as well as one of the most critically and financially successful. Its success inspired many to become video game developers, contributing to a rise in indie game releases throughout the 2010s. Many of these games include similar themes, gameplay mechanics, or music to Hotline Miami. Games influenced by Hotline Miami continued to be made over a decade after its release, ranging from indie games to ones made by larger, big-budget studios like Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part II (2020).

The soundtrack was also influential, helping popularize synthwave and leading to the mainstream success of the featured artists. The game contributed to the success of Devolver Digital, which has since become one of the most successful indie game publishers.