The challenge to game designers is to create a ‘unified’ game– I’m not sure if this is the popular term, but it’s the one I will use– or, in other words, one which is ‘ludonarratively consonant‘.Īnd I believe that Hotline Miami is quite possibly the most unified video game in the short history of the art.įirst we must ask, what is the game about? Well, the obvious answer is that it’s about violence. The problem is, when game mechanics are used thoughtlessly in tandem with narrative components(as they all too often are), they can send messages that either blatantly conflict with those narrative elements or, together, imply something altogether unsavory and unintended. As I’ve alluded to previously on Problem machine, game mechanics have meaning, particularly in combination with a narrative context. If you’ve been paying attention to some of the thinking going on in game design circles over the last few years, you may be familiar with the term ‘ludonarrative dissonance’. If a woodchuck could chuck wood how much wood fuck– chuck– wood– crap. I really would like anyone who has any interest in experiencing games to play through the game before reading the second segment of the essay: A game is the experience of playing the game, and if you undermine that experience by knowing more going into it than you should then you risk tainting that experience. The first segment here is going to be spoiler-free, discussing Hotline Miami’s general design approach, before moving on to the specific details of the plot and how it interacts with the gameplay to create a truly unique and integrated experience.

So: Why fight it? I believe that Hotline Miami is an Important game, and I think it will become highly influential over the next decade of game design. The thing is, I’ve been playing these games and they’re just too damn exciting, they set my brain on fire with new ideas for things to talk about it and the most logical way to talk about all of these disparate ideas is to talk about the games themselves. Doing reviews and analyses of specific games is kind of out of form for Problem Machine, but I seem to be doing it a lot nowadays regardless.

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