Hotel Barcelona

It all started about six years ago when two of the gaming industry's most twisted and creative minds, Goichi "Suda51" Suda (Lollipop Chainsaw, No More Heroes, Shadow of the Damned) and Hidetaka "Swery65" Suehiro (Deadly Premonition, The Good Life, D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die), sat down at an event and exchanged ideas, mostly just for fun, joking that it could turn into a crazy game. Fast forward to September 2025 and here is Hotel Barcelona, a frantic 2D roguelike action game with a unique little twist, the result of the two gentlemen's collaboration.

Let's start by taking a step back. If we're being completely honest, the games from these two gentlemen aren't always particularly good, if you measure them on the traditional gaming scale, that is. They are often a little clunky, the mechanics don't always work optimally, and they are often technically inferior, but what they lack in quality in these areas, they make up for in abundance when it comes to style, madness, creativity, and quirkiness. The two creators deliberately break the unwritten rules of game design, and familiar mechanics and conventions are typically packaged in a completely different way, and that is exactly why I love games like Lollipop Chainsaw and Shadow of the Damned.

Hotel Barcelona, however, is a little more subdued. Yes, it's still crazy, but the madness you might otherwise expect from the two game creators is not as prominent. With this game, Suda51 and Swery65 venture into the roguelite genre. You take on the role of Justine, a green and somewhat insecure US Marshal, who on a dark night must escort a cocaine-snorting gangster to Hotel Barcelona, located somewhere on the border between West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The place has become home to America's most notorious serial killers, and the plan was to let the gangster loose on the hotel grounds so he could wipe out all the criminals. That would solve the problem, wouldn't it?

However, the gangster never arrives, and through a series of twists and turns, Justine ends up in one of the hotel rooms without being able to remember how she got there. She also discovers that she has been possessed by Dr. Carnival, a serial killer who wants to help her get rid of all the criminals in the hotel, and after a little chat with him in the room, she takes on the task herself.

As is often the case with games in this genre, you will die many times, after which you upgrade your weapons, abilities, and other things, and then try again, again, and again until you get to the next step. It works the same way here, but as mentioned at the beginning, the familiar mechanics are always packaged a little differently when they come from Suda51 and Swery65.

To upgrade Justine's abilities, for example, you have to talk to Tim the Monster, who lives in her wardrobe in her room, and if you need new weapons, you pick up the phone and call the ranger Monica Rodriguez, who also lives at the hotel. And there are plenty of weapons. In fact, there are more than 60 different weapons in various categories, ranging from knives, axes, machetes, and rotating saw blades to shotguns, Molotov cocktails, grenades, flamethrowers, and more creative weapons such as shovels, Route 66 signs, a frozen leg of lamb, a lump of concrete on an iron pipe, and much more.

Hotel Barcelona is a bloody game, and blood actually plays a central role. The more enemies you kill, the more blood there is to bathe in, and the more blood you bathe in, the more your Splatter Gauge fills up. When it's full, you can activate your inner serial killer, the aforementioned Dr. Carnival, and perform various brutal "Carnival Awakening" super attacks. Be sure to use your Carnival Awakening attacks in time, because the blood in your Splatter Gauge can dry out or be instantly emptied if, for example, you fall into water or get wet in some other way.

Hotel Barcelona stands out from the crowd in many ways, but where it really differs is in its new Phantom Slasher feature. This system works much like ghosts in racing games, in that you can see up to four ghosts of your previous attempts on the level - known as Phantoms. Even though the others are ghosts, they can still help present-day Justine destroy enemies, acting as a kind of teammate who jumps, hits, shoots, and runs in exactly the same places and in exactly the same way as you did in your previous runs. They can actually be used tactically against bosses. At one point, I had to destroy four points on the boss, and if you take them one-by-one and then die, you will eventually attack all four points at the same time with the help of your Phantom Slasher ghosts, allowing you to defeat the enemy. Quite a clever system. However, there are also passages in the game where these Phantom Slasher ghosts are not available, but I won't reveal any more about that here.

This brings us to the game's multiplayer mode. There is a co-op mode for up to three players, where you can play together as a Phantom Slasher ghost and try to survive in the hotel together, or you can invade other players' games and terrorise their attempts to survive. The single-player part is clearly the heart of the game, but multiplayer is also good entertainment if you can find a few friends who share your twisted taste in games and also own Hotel Barcelona.

The roguelite loop works quite well. There are seven serial killers to find and defeat, and there are plenty of upgrades, plenty of weapons, and plenty of blood everywhere. The combat system is fast, but unfortunately also a little imprecise, and it feels like there is a slight delay between the moment your attack animation ends and you regain control of Justine, which makes for a strangely uneven combat system. This actually contributes to you often taking unnecessary damage, as you are completely open to attacks from enemies during this short pause.

On the other hand, the Phantom Slasher system is well thought out and actually works quite well, however, it can be a little difficult to see what is going on on the screen when there are four ghosts, Justine herself and lots of enemies, torn limbs, and blood everywhere. It's also in these situations that the frame rate can take a sharp dive, as there is simply too much happening on the screen for the game engine to keep up.

Hotel Barcelona comes with a fairly brutal difficulty level as standard. However, there are four difficulty levels to choose from, and the easiest one makes the game relatively easy. If the high difficulty levels are not enough (they should be!), you can use Bondage Mode, where you can make the game even more difficult in 12 different areas. For example, by removing the ability to block, dodge, use firearms, or use melee weapons, by starting the game with a single health point, or by removing the ability to use your Splatter Gauge. So if you really want to be torn apart, there are plenty of opportunities to do so here.

As mentioned earlier, Hotel Barcelona seems strangely ordinary when you consider who is behind the game. That's not to say that it IS ordinary, because it definitely isn't, but I had expected a more crazy game. Despite the brilliant Phantom Slasher mechanics, Hotel Barcelona does not take the genre in new directions. It's a fine roguelike, especially if you are a big fan of roguelikes or of Suda51 and Swery65's unique approach to established genres, or perhaps both.

That said, I miss the total onslaught of wacky ideas and creativity that one might otherwise expect from these two gentlemen, as the total madness is missing in Hotel Barcelona.