Swery and Suda51 are teaming up for the 2.5D action game Hotel Barcelona, coming next year
Swery-led studio White Owls Inc. and Grasshopper Manufacture’s Suda51, the studio behind the No More Heroes series, have teamed up to develop Hotel Barcelona. Revealed during the Tokyo Game Show 2023 broadcast on Xbox, the team describes Hotel Barcelona as a “2.5D slasher movie parody action” game that will be released next year.
Serial killers from all over the United States probably gather at the Hotel Barcelona to commit serial murderous acts. The player must defeat them all and leave the Hotel Barcelona before “all the blood is shed.” It is scheduled to release in 2024 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC via Steam.
Check out the Hotel Barcelona reveal trailer below:
In an Xbox Wire blog post, Swery says the idea was born during an event hosted by Suda51 called “Travis Monday Nitro 2” in Shibuya, Tokyo, in October 2019. The two discussed developing a game together and announced then and there that it would be called Hotel Barcelona. Later that year, the two worked out the plan and game details “in one fell swoop over dinner in Canada.”
Swery describes Hotel Barcelona as a horror-themed side-scrolling action game where melee weapons, such as an enlarged surgical knife, are your primary weapon, and other items, such as a shotgun or Molotov cocktail, serve as your secondary weapons. “You will go on missions equipped with each of these types of weapons,” Swery tells Xbox. “Weapons are generally obtained from treasure chests that you drop during missions.”
He describes Hotel Barcelona as the place where “all the action happens” and an integrated leisure complex with facilities such as a casino, campsite and much more. There are a total of seven “smaller worlds” inside the hotel. In each of these seven smaller worlds there is a serial killer boss to defeat. Swery notes that the serial killer bosses are not an homage to a single historical figure, but rather “an embodiment of a subgenre of horror films.” You may see bosses inspired by slasher films, zombie horror films, summer camp B-movies, babysitter films, and more.
An interesting mechanic called Slasher Phantom is also at work in the Hotel Barcelona.
“Simply put: the player’s previous character moves automatically as in the last playthrough, but still retains all hitboxes,” says Swery. “Something similar would be the ghost function in racing games, but with hit detection; it will feel like you are fighting your past self. You can hold up to three Slasher Phantoms, making your adventure easier in each level.
“[Each] One of the seven worlds consists of several areas to clear, and the boss appears in the final area. As you clear an area, you can choose a power-up that can restore your health or increase your attack power. However, if you get hit and are sent back to the beginning of the area, it may be attractive for you to take a different route than the previous one, for example to increase your attack power. If you do this and choose a different route, the Slasher Phantoms will completely reset.
Hotel Barcelona is scheduled to release sometime in 2024 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
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