Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is a top-down shooter video game that is divided into numerous segments presented as "acts" and "scenes". In each chapter, the player is tasked with defeating every enemy with melee and ranged attacks. Additional methods available to the player include knocking out enemies with a door and finishing moves. Each stage has a varied design, composed of large, open rooms with many ways for enemies to approach the player.

Most chapters have the player take control of a different character. Each character behaves differently, possessing unique abilities like dodging or defeating opponents non-lethally. Some characters can choose from a selection of weapons or masks, the latter of which modifies their abilities depending on the mask chosen.

The events of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number are presented out of chronological order: before, during, and after the events of Hotline Miami (2012), focusing on events in 1985, 1989, and 1991 respectively. After the events of the original game, the player character, Jacket, is arrested, having been manipulated by 50 Blessings—a neo-nationalist terror cell posing as a peaceful activist group—into assassinating the Russian mafia's leadership, which leads to his nationwide infamy.

The game follows several playable characters through a series of intersecting plotlines that explore the background and aftermath of Jacket's rampage. Beard, the shopkeeper from Jacket's hallucinations in the first game, serves alongside him in a commando squad deployed in Hawaii in 1985. Operating simultaneously with Jacket in 1989 are Jake, a nativist member of 50 Blessings, and Richter, a reluctant operative of the same group, both committing their own massacres. In 1991, a group of copycat killers known as The Fans try to emulate Jacket for attention.

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number was developed by Dennaton Games, a duo composed of designer and programmer Jonatan Söderström and artist Dennis Wedin. Following the success of Hotline Miami, Dennaton soon began developing downloadable content to expand on the game, planning for it to both rival the base game in scale and introduce new playable characters alongside a level editor. As development progressed, Dennaton realized the scope was greater than that of Hotline Miami and decided to transform it into a full sequel. Söderström announced the sequel on 26 November 2012, via his Twitter account.

As with the first game, Hotline Miami 2 was made in Game Maker 7. When porting the game to consoles, Abstraction Games used their own SilverWare engine as well as the conversion program GameBaker.

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number received generally positive reviews from critics. On Metacritic, it holds an aggregated score of 74 per cent based on 67 reviews for the PC version, 75 per cent based on 18 reviews for the PlayStation 4 version, and 66 per cent based on 4 reviews for the PlayStation Vita version.

The gameplay received a mixed response from critics, who felt the narrative ambition generally led to larger and more challenging levels. Alex Carlson of Hardcore Gamer found this made the level design feel more realistic and diverse. Steven Burns of VideoGamer felt that the game's ambition fell to the "bigger is better" trope, criticising it for not granting the player as much freedom and for making gameplay reliant on the character being used. However, these different characters were viewed positively by Chloi Rad of IGN, who liked the unique ideas of each character, and considered a pacifist character as a "shocking twist" for the series.