During GDC 2025, MonsterVine was invited to an Xbox preview event, where we played SWERY and SUDA51’s upcoming 2.5D slasher-action game Hotel Barcelona. We walked away from the event pleasantly surprised because calling Hotel Barcelona 2.5D a slasher-action game almost doesn’t seem fair. The game has so many layers to it, and on top of being a roguelike, it’s incredibly charming and filled with lots of replayability to keep players returning for more and more.
Admittedly, I couldn’t uncover much of the story during my time with it. However, I was able to piece together a lot of core story beats in the game. To quickly summarize it, you play as a federal marshal who ends up stuck inside a hotel filled with serial killers that’s right outside of Pittsburgh. To make matters worse, you have a serial killer who’s stuck in your head but is bent on ensuring you escape the hotel alive. But there are also some significant caveats: every time you get stronger, you lose a piece of yourself to an unknown entity, and each time players die, they’re transported back to their room and have to attempt the level all over again.
Before each run starts, players can select their loadout, mainly consisting of what melee weapon they want to use and other upgradeable items. Like other games in the genre, it allows players to switch things up and actively encourages them to try new methods. Once they’re to start the mission, a curveball is thrown at the players. A random effect will come into play, drastically altering how that specific run plays out.
For example, one could make you a giant, which makes many of your attacks do more damage. On the flip side, it could make you smaller, which makes players weaker overall. Then some are just for the rule of cool, such as making the map a bit darker or having it rain. So, players never really know what they’ll get until they start the level.
As players progress through the level, there will be multiple doors for them to go through. These doors will lead them to essentially mini-challenges to complete. Once they survive whatever is thrown at them, doors will begin to spawn that’ll let them out. The catch is that each door will give them specific upgrades, forcing the players to think about which door they want to go through.
One of the most interesting parts is when players die. Because the second they start another run, a ghost will run alongside them. This ghost will perform all of the actions you did in your last run down to a tee. So, if you decide to jump up and down in the same spot, it’ll do that. But it’ll also swing and shoot at the same place you did. This is where things become interesting because, often, your ghost can end up helping you by killing enemies in front of you in your current run. It’s also worth mentioning that there are some limits to this.
For starters, players can’t have an army of ghosts following them around. But as the game progresses, they can upgrade a feature that’ll allow them to have more. So, in theory, they could have a small squad of ghosts to help them kill whatever horrors await them. The other is that the ghost will disappear once players reach where they originally died. This is to help ensure players aren’t too powerful for each run. Most importantly, the ghost will disappear if players take different routes in a run. So if a player goes to complete a mini-challenge one run and skips it in the next, the ghost will disappear. This creates a fun dynamic of questioning whether players should try the same thing again or play the level differently.
In addition, the game’s art is nothing less than phenomenal. The color palette resembles something you’d see in 90s horror films, and the enemies further reflect that. When players stumble into boss fights, the animation quality dramatically increases, making it feel as if they’re watching a high-quality anime for specific scenes. When they’re not in combat, it’s nice to appreciate how detailed the character art is when two people talk. Like Hades, watching these conversations play out is nice because you get to see some fabulous artwork on top of hearing quality voice acting.
Hotel Barcelona was easily one of my biggest surprises at GDC 2025. It was because I hadn’t paid too much attention to it before the event. After getting my hands on it and playing it for a while, I realized it’s easily one of my most anticipated games of 2025. Hotel Barcelona is set to release sometime this year and will be playable on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.
