With Hotel Barcelona, Hidetaka Suehiro's White Owls will very soon convert a (but of course) serial killer idea by Goichi Suda into a loop-based, action-platforming, film-parodying 2.5D slasher. The game was fully unveiled a year ago with a goal to release towards the end of this year, but will in the end launch in "early 2025", as Swery himself confirmed to Gamereactor the other day.
It was at the IndieDevDay 2024 in Barcelona, were the Japanese developer had a panel hosted by yours truly on behalf of Gamereactor. It consisted of both an extended gameplay presentation with commentary by the dev as he played, and a QA session where the audience and the fans took part. And you can watch both videos, with added subtitles, among these lines.
"I always wanted to make a horror game together with Suda51", Swery65 explains about how this game went from a horror concept inspired by Twin Peaks and Forbidden Siren to what it is now. "And when we were talking about it, I came up with a very complicated idea for a game. And Suda51 said, 'no, no, you should make it more simple'. Just make it a game where you go around killing other serial killers".
In the full video, Suehiro-san shares more about Suda-san's involvement and regular supervision. "Before we decided on the idea, we had multiple meetings where we would drink together and just discuss our ideas", says the man whose favourite thing about Barcelona are "the bars".
The game is pretty much ready for players to step into the shoes of federal marshal Justine and to listen to her own, inner serial killer, Dr. Carnival, as the best advisor when it comes to Killer7 deal with the other serial killers.
"For this game in particular, in order to track down the serial killers, we have to go to seven different worlds, seven different stages", he adds when asked about movie references, Cat People and Deadly Premonition. "And each stage is a parody of a different sub-genre of horror. So, for example, the first one is summer camp horror parody. The next one is restaurant horror parody. There's also alien horror parody (...)"
"The story is very deep, and it is actually related to the city of Barcelona", he later confirms to a fan asking about the game's title. "But that's something you have to play the game carefully to understand. The reason why the title was decided to be Hotel Barcelona was because Suda-san suddenly announced the title at the event. I thought it was cool".
"Every three days, there is a new moon in the game. And when it's a new moon, it's very dark. And you can only see around your character. It's pitch black, so it becomes very difficult. The time of day, the weather, and the player size change with every run".
"Right now, we're bug checking the game and we want to keep polishing it and making it better", Swery explains about the final stage of development, as the game he was playing was content-complete, compared to the demo on the show floor. "But ideally, we want to release the game in early 2025".
"There will be a simultaneous release on Steam, Xbox, and PS5". However, regarding Nintendo's platform, and contrary to everyone's belief, there are no plans currently, as the Japanese CEO jokingly adds, "in the distant future, maybe AI will port it to Switch for me".
Suehiro-san also talks about his studio White Owls Inc, which is located in Osaka, and points out that "there are only 13 people on the team, and they're always working on two or three games at the same time; and our goal is to deliver unique games to people like you, who like very unique games".
We'll have more on Hotel Barcelona with our own preview, but take a look at the complete, 28-min commented gameplay demo from IDD below to get the most accurate and comprehensive idea about it. The video was "the first time anyone sees the opening animations of the game".