Steam is having a massive indie game spring blowout until March 29. Don’t worry about having missed out on any special deals though, because it’s a digital delivery service. There’s no shortage of inventory. Some of the gems we’ve picked up for under $10 include the funnily sarcastic DLC Quest, the visually delightful Incredipede, and the Swedishly demented Hotline Miami.
Other fun titbits out there are FTL, Garry’s Mod, and Braid, along with the 2011 IGF Finalists & Winners, and games featured at PAX East.
Steam’s sale also coincides with Hotline Miami coming out on Mac last week.
These faces will haunt your dreams.
Hotline Miami is a multiple award-winning, top-down 8-bit game where you roll around an alternative April 1989 Miami in a silver DeLorean, slaughtering Russian gangsters. Whilst wearing a chicken-head mask. To date, the game has sold over 300,000 copies in five months.
Hotline also features a pumping, jittery, but still haunting retro-techno soundtrack that you can buy as DLC or stream it for free via Bandcamp. Just what you need pouring over you like a sunset as you slaughter (there’s that word again) with deranged abandon.
The game comes off like a drunken first viewing of Drive where gangsters, murder, and intrigue happen to a shimmering, dusted soundtrack with OutRun’s graphics. Hotline bears some of Nicolas Winding Refn’s hallmark hallucinatory tone that he used in Valhalla Rising, and it plays out like the scenic, mindless violence in Bronson. The following quote from Drive would feel just at home in Hotline Miami.
There’s a hundred-thousand streets in this city. You don’t need to know the route. You give me a time and a place, I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I’m yours. No matter what. Anything happens a minute either side of that and you’re on your own. Do you understand?
[pause]
Good. And you won’t be able to reach me on this phone again.
The word slaughter keeps getting tossed around to describe this game. Simply put, that’s because it’s what you do. All the time. You sneak into buildings, wearing different animal head masks that imbue you with different attributes, and kill everything you see. You get to use clubs, katanas, guns, pool-cues, bricks, and whatever else is available. However, so do your enemies. You just have to use your weapon first. Be careful though, because your enemies are fast, deadly, and you only have one life.
Yes, one life. Luckily, you get to instantly respawn at the start of each level, but that makes it all the more infuriating and addictive. This time — this tiem — I will time it just right. This time I will only use the lead pipe. This time I will do it. As Penny Arcade describes it, “Hotline Miami is the split second between an inhale and an exhale.”
And there goes an hour.
While the graphics are nice and clunky, the AI is a little more progressive, giving enemies line of sight and ranged hearing. Think you can clear a level by firing a gun and creaming every goon that walks through the door to investigate? It turns out you missed a couple. And you’re dead.
Again.
You can’t spell slaughter without some laughter in there.
As the levels progress, a demented storyline emerges, with reality coming a distant second to your actions. Maybe you’re a coke-fuelled maniac, maybe you’re in a mental home. There is a story here, buried beneath it all, along with numerous Easter eggs and secrets. That crowbar isn’t just for spraying the grey. What is this fragment of text under a table?
Who’s behind this sick depravity?
Jonatan “Cactus 69” Söderström has a large background in free, indie games. Wanting to make a little cash, Söderström teamed up with Dennis Wedin as Dennaton Games to produce Hotline Miami so they could finance more games. Söderström has gone so far as to respond to comments on The Pirate Bay giving advice to people having difficulty with pirated copies of the game.
When questioned about piracy issues by Eurogamer, Graeme Struthers of Devolver Digital, who are distributing Hotline Miami, said:
He just felt he didn’t want people playing the buggy version of his game however they got it. He wanted them to get the patch. He basically said, ‘I’m not going to criticise this, it’s a fact of life. It would be nice if guys could find it within themselves to pay for it, but that’s the world I’m in, so you know, you just have to take it for what it is.’ It has been torrented to such a staggering level, and given the file size of it, I mean, you can’t really be surprised, right? You could pass this thing around on the world’s smallest memory stick. So it has been torrented to extraordinary levels.
Slaughter. S-L-A-U-G-H-T-E-R. Slaughter. Use that in recess tomorrow, kids!
Get Hotline Miami today for $4.99 on Steam or $9.99 on Gog.com until March 29. The game makes its way to the PlayStaion 3 & Sony Vita later this quarter, playable at GDC. At those prices, why torrent?
If you want to see what’s in the future of indie gaming at Steam, take a look at its Steam Greenlight section.
Bonus Level: Jacket from Hotline Miami goes Wreck-It Ralph all over your childhood.
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