Step inside HOTEL BARCELONA and you’re not just checking in, you’re checking your sanity at the door. This blood-soaked 2.5D roguelike from SUDA51 and SWERY throws you into a surreal slaughterhouse disguised as a luxury hotel, where every corridor hides a killer and every death births a phantom echo of your former self. With tactical combat, grotesque boss battles, and a twisted dual-mind protagonist, HOTEL BARCELONA invites you to embrace the madness, master the carnage, and uncover the secrets lurking behind velvet curtains and bloodstained wallpaper.

HOTEL BARCELONA Review Pros

• Awesome graphics. 
• Download size. 
• Steam achievements. 
• Full controller support. 
• Accessibility options – Colourblind support, and UI size. 
• Game settings – vibrate on/off, player and boss HP bars, doppelganger on/off, and blood visibility (default or popcorn). 
• Video options – resolution, screen mode, graphics preset, and v-sync. 
• You can remap the controls. 
• Full stats screen in the special features section. 
• 12 save slots. 
• Fuooy voiced characters are awesome performances. 
• In-game cutscenes, animated show-like sequences, and character interactions with avatars and text, but voiced. 
• The production value is excellent. 
• Four difficulties you can select on every new run: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Slasher. 
• World map level select, where you can choose where to go if it’s unlocked. 
• Six locations to unlock – Diamond Lake campsite, main building, Long P.G. Steakhouse, Death Doll, main building, storage area, and deep jungle. 
• Run-based gameplay loop. 
• Slasher phantoms appear in-game, and in fact, it is your previous self, and they replay what you just did. They and you cannot hurt each other, but they will do damage to the enemy if they are in their path. This shows itself in levels, but especially in boss fights and is so cool. 
• When you die in a run, you drop everything you had; you can go back on your next run and collect it back up. 
• The game world is like a haunted hotel in that you go to these locations, but to travel around, you enter hotel doors, and when you die, you start back in your hotel room. 
• Each door will show if the room has bonuses or disadvantages to going in; you can skip over them and have some say in your exploration and path. 
• Loadouts can be changed before a run, and you buy new weapons, both melee and ranged, from the Ranger.
• 2D side-scrolling action game with full 3D backgrounds and foreground. 
• Hack and slash style combat, it’s very fast paced, and as said, you have melee and ranged and then unlock new abilities and attacks. 
• Huge skill tree to plough collected hearts into. A good addition is that anything that can be unlocked will flash. 
• Breakable objects within the game world, some to cause damage to enemies, some to hide secrets, and some can contain loot. 
• Fast and frantic yet totally fitting soundtrack. 
• Collect resources and materials to spend on new weapons. 
• Seven weapon types, each with variations – knives and sticks, axes, twin buzzsaws, handguns, shotguns, flamethrowers, and projectiles. 
• The characters are like half the game, they are so unique and fun to interact with, as you progress, more becomes open, and you can hear back stories and interactions. 
• Earn, and buy tickets so you can restart a run or just the boss part, and the real upside is the phantoms will stay and fight, and you will not lose any materials. 
• When you finish a level or leave with materials and resources, you have to spend them all before going on a new run; otherwise, you have to sacrifice them. 
• Over time, you get to unlock the ability to save a percentage of materials and resources that go into your central storage box. 
• Tim the closet monster. That’s it, that’s the best part of the game. 
• Unlock and equip new costumes at the mirror in your room. 
• The telephone in your room means you can contact all the many vendors and that can be reached and done without having to walk around. 
• The Concierge will let you add or take out modifiers to increase the difficulty or change how the game plays, such as one-hit deaths, and enemies have more health, etc. It is all optional. 
• I really like the crazy world that they have created, and it’s all a mash of screaming WTF is going on and Oh man, that is cool, then dying, usually, but what a cycle every run. 
• Fill the Skull Gauge by fighting, and when it fills up, you get to cast a Carnival Awakening: a devastating special attack that unleashes a special screen-changing and damage-inducing attack. 
• The seven locations in that game are all a mod to different genres of horror and have cool bosses and even better movie-like posters showing the boss; it just oozes awesome. 
• Multiplayer is implemented but needs to be discovered and unlocked. You can have up to 3 total players in online co op. 
• Invasions are a thing and are truly just as scary as the boss encounters. A person can and will randomly inject themselves into your world. 
• The game seems like it’s all straightforward, but any time an action, a find or a sequence can just flip the script and unlock a new mechanic or something else. 
• I really love how the game plays and is presented, and any game that evokes the feeling of finding a niche Japanese title in this day and age is a huge win. 

HOTEL BARCELONA Review Cons

• The tutorial implementation is a bit on the not useful side, as it’s either delayed or not mentioned at all, so many times I found myself not understanding how half the ui worked or why. 
• Fighting is straightforward for the most part, but the game is difficult and just aimlessly mashing your way through will have you dying and getting frustrated a lot. 
• It took a fair few hours for me to get to grips with the many mechanics and learning the proper use of phantoms and the combat. 
• The colours can kind of bleed into each other and can make seeing enemies tricky. 
• As the levels are generally timed, you have to haul ass, and that can cause you to miss secrets or pickups, and it just adds a lot of stress. 

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HOTEL BARCELONA

Official Website:

Developer: White Owls Inc.

Publisher: CULT Games

Store Link:

Steam