Swery’s oddball roguelike Hotel Barcelona isn’t exactly good, but its janky jaunt through horror movie history is endearing all the same

Ten seconds into Hotel Barcelona, you’re watching an aerial shot tracking a car through the mountains, The Shining-style; a couple of minutes later, a gas station attendant is giving you an ominous warning about the campsite up ahead where a young baseball player drowned. Even the bar you eventually visit has nicked its décor wholesale from the Overlook Hotel. If nothing else, Deadly Premonition developer Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro’s latest oddball endeavour – an action-roguelike created in collaboration with No More Heroes’ Goichi “Suda51” Suda – is an endearing love letter to horror movies, even amid the jank.

You play as perpetually flustered US Marshal Justine Bernstein, whose deceased father made a pact with a serial killer named Dr. Carnival long ago. And while the specifics of the deal remain mysterious, the upshot is you’re now possessed – very much against your will – by the evil doctor’s surprisingly chatty soul. But silver linings and all that; it turns out being able to call on the formidable bloodlust of a notorious serial killer is quite handy when you’re battling through waves of undead B-movie rejects on your hunt for the witch that murdered your pa.

It’s a premise that’s compelling in its preposterousness, but Hotel Barcelona doesn’t exactly make a strong first impression as a game. It’s essentially a side-scrolling roguelike where you move from left-to-right bludgeoning monsters until you reach the big boss five areas later at each level’s end. Death means starting over, but you can at least use the spoils of your most recent attempt to expand and upgrade your repertoire of skills for another go. As with most games made by Swery’s White Owls studio, though, it feels pretty rough. Movement is slippery and weightless; its mushy, strangely spartan visuals – which have the air of something assembled using assets from a budget PS2 game when the art director was on holiday – are often completely unreadable, and the chain of responsibility has faltered so much, even the script’s typos have made it into the voice acting.

But as with White Owls’ previous games, there’s an earnest can-do spirit to Hotel Barcelona’s delirious nonsense – its larger-than-life characters, its wild conversational asides, and its pinwheeling sense of mad invention – that’s easy to like. This is a game where ability upgrades are doled out by a monster – sorry, a French monster – called Tim who lives in your hotel room closet. There’s a suspiciously friendly barman called Grady (what else?) who’ll happily supply useful upgrade materials in exchange for severed ears, and there’s a possibly haunted pinball machine in the corner that’s already hoovered up a significant amount of my time. And while the fundamentals of its roguelike action will be extremely familiar to anyone who’s played Dead Cells and its ilk, it’s got ideas of its own here as well.

I should begin by saying that Hotel Barcelona’s initially stilted combat does loosen up quite quickly as you start to unlock the likes of high kicks and ground pounds, but it remains awkward in a way that I suspect won’t improve. And while enemies in the early stages are rarely more than dim-witted cannon fodder, I’ve been enjoying the wrinkles Hotel Barcelona introduces with each new run. There’s the slowly burgeoning arsenal of knives, sticks, axes, buzz saws, handguns, shotguns, flamethrowers, and projectiles to augment your basic slaps, kicks, blocks, dodges, and – yes – serial killer possession powers. Plus there’s a randomisation gimmick that means the time of day, weather, and even you are different each time.

One run might take you on a misty morning jaunt through terror, while the next time you visit the level, it’ll be during a midnight downpour and you’re suddenly three times taller than you were before. And if you want to mix things up even further, there are optional Bondage Rules (don’t ask), introducing handicaps – no melee, no dodging, 1HP mode, lethal water, and so on – for an extra element of risk and reward. It adds a bit of variety to the inherently repetitive roguelike formula, and there’s a further twist in each stage’s comically incongruous doors. Passing through a door takes you along a different path on the way to the boss, but also awards you a random temporary boost – perhaps more health or a stronger attack – you can reclaim from your body on the next run-through. Some doors initiate challenges to complete on-the-fly, while others take you to more discrete areas with minigame-like rules.

Then there’s Hotel Barcelona’s main gimmick, which sees you playing alongside Phantoms – basically recordings of your previous attempts – with each new run. The idea is you can use your earlier actions to your advantage (provided you don’t stray from a previously followed path, that is) by, say, kiting enemies into your former selves as they whirl violently around. Admittedly, Phantoms have yet to prove particularly useful beyond boss fights, but it all adds up to something I keep being drawn back to, even with the unavoidable jank.

I’m not for a minute suggesting Hotel Barcelona is a genuinely good (or even slightly good) video game, but I do kind of dig it all the same. Yes, its sometimes-tone-deaf jokes fall flat, and yes, it’s a mess. But it’s such an affectionate, enthusiastic homage to horror movies – with its unsubtle easter eggs, and its parade of slasher villain rejects and familiar hunting grounds – that the genre nerd in me can’t help but be swept along. Will I tire of it quickly? Quite possibly. Should you rush out and buy it? Probably not. Am I glad I spent the morning walking the strange halls of Hotel Barcelona with a serial killer inside me? Yes, I most definitely am.