Hotel Barcelona Review – SWERY and SUDA51’s Janky Baby

Hotel Barcelona Review

Hotel Barcelona is a 2D roguelite action platformer developed by White Owls and Grasshopper Manufacture. This is a team up of SWERY and SUDA51, two Japanese game creators responsible for cult classics like Deadly Premonition, Killer7, and No More Heroes. Both devs are known for games with wacky ideas, stories, and characters, but sometimes gameplay that’s less than ideal. SUDA51’s games, at their worst, are known for more generic gameplay, and SWERY’s games are known for more janky gameplay. Hotel Barcelona is an example of both developers flexing their greatest strengths, and greatest weaknesses.

Hotel Barcelona stars Federal Marshal Justine. The game opens with a partially animated cutscene showing Justine driving a federal agent called “The Exterminator” on his way to kill a witch. They’ve picked up a sexy hitchhiker, who’s giving Justine grief about her phone navigation being annoying. During this squabble the car crashes into a horde of zombies, and The Exterminator and the hitchhiker are killed. Justine wakes up in a hotel room, talking to “Imprisoned Serial Killer Dr. Carnival”.

A Serial Killer in Her Mind

Imprisoned Serial Killer Dr. Carnival is a great example of the wackiness found in Hotel Barcelona. He’s bound in a straitjacket, chains and cage, with a glowing skull head. He’s described by the hotel owner as “the dark shadow inside of Justine”. So Justine has multiple personality disorder, and talks to Dr. Carnival, who only exists in her mind. Dr. Carnival convinces Justine that she should continue with the Exterminator’s mission to kill the witch, who happens to be the owner of the hotel Justine wakes up in.

The Hotel Barcelona itself acts as a hub area between level attempts. The Hotel has six major levels. The opening level is the Diamond Lake Campsite, but there’s also the Long Pig Steakhouse, the Storage Area, the Deep Jungle tropical greenhouse, the Death Doll carnival, and the Main Building. Every time Justine dies playing a level, Justine wakes up in the hotel again. Dr. Carnival explains that this loop will close when Justine kills the witch.

A Cast of Strange Characters

There are several interesting characters Justine meets in Hotel Barcelona. Closet Monster Tim gives Justine access to a massive skill tree. Upgrades cost a combination of cash, bones, teeth, and ears. Monica the Ranger lets Justine spend those same weird materials to upgrade weapons. Bartender Charles Grady lets Justine exchange materials for other materials (he loves ear collecting). There are also a couple minigames in the form of fortunetelling with Mr. Clown, and pinball. The front desk allows the player to enable handicaps like “no guarding” or “one hit deaths”. Activating more handicaps leads to better rewards.

Hotel Barcelona’s bizarre presentation is its main draw. The story is just plain weird. All the characters are interesting. The Hotel Barcelona setting makes for a compelling game world. All of the game art looks great too. The character portraits are particularly gorgeous. It’s obviously a lower budget game, but the stylized visuals elevate the presentation. My only complaints are that while the character portraits and cutscenes both match with the gameplay graphics, they don’t match each other. The voice acting is okay, but not great. And the music is also very forgettable.

Roguelite Gameplay Loop

Hotel Barcelona has a roguelite gameplay loop. Before every mission, the player gets to choose a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, and a costume. Collected materials disappear at the start of a new run. A level consists of a few areas. Each area has several doors, which each lead to different areas. It’s worth investigating each door because they all give a different reward, depending on which one the player chooses. Each area has a minutes-long minute timer though, so sometimes it’s best to just jump in the first door the player sees. Most of the areas are similar, and they all lead to the same boss battle at the end of the level.

The gameplay is 2D action platforming. Square does a quick combo melee attack. Triangle is a heavy attack that breaks enemy guard status bars. It has an incredibly long animation, and is only useful for careful guard breaking situations. X is jump, and double tap to double jump. R2 fires an equipped gun. Each gun has a limited number of shots before it needs to be reloaded. Reloading is done automatically, but has a cooldown that lasts a few precious seconds. L2 guards. Circle dodges backwards. It’s a simple control scheme that works well. Killing or getting certain items fills the blood spatter meter. Holding L1 uses a full meter to activate powers, such as screen clearing attacks.

Janky-Feeling Controls

Unfortunately playing Hotel Barcelona doesn’t feel good. There’s a delay between most of the button inputs. Justine jumps lighting fast, but her jump takes a second to register. I was always pressing the d-pad to turn around, or square to start a new attack only to have the game do nothing. I never got the hang of the input timing Hotel Barcelona expected. The heavy attack is completely useless aside from guard breaking, so there’s no combo system. And the camera can’t keep up with Justine’s movements. Do a double jump, and the camera hangs way above where it should. The camera can be moved with the right joystick, but this kind of camera was unacceptable in the 16-bit generation, let alone 2025.

The platforming elements are atrocious. The jump has an arc the player can’t control. A lot of areas are set up so there aren’t bottomless pits until right before the boss. It feels horrible to have a flawless run through a level only to deal with some janky platforming right at the end, which kills you in an instant.

Guns also have a horrible auto-aim, where the player will be blasting an enemy, and the auto-aim will switch to another enemy before that first enemy is killed. It won’t even necessarily target the closest enemy. Plenty of times I was shooting the enemy closest to me, and another enemy ran onscreen behind them, and my gun just switched to the further enemy. These were very common issues and incredibly frustrating in a roguelite that needs precise controls.

Cluttered UI

Hotel Barcelona’s UI has a massive countdown timer in the top middle of the screen. The top left of the screen has bars for hit points and stamina, while the top right of the screen shows an area layout. Along the left-hand side are symbols for the amounts of cash, keys, coins, bones, teeth, and ears the player has. There’s the mission name in the bottom left. The bottom middle of the screen has a skull that acts as the blood splatter meter. To the left of the skull are icons for phantom attack, splatter rate, attack speed, and movement speed. Then to the right of the skull are percentages for critical, stamina use, and defense. The bottom right has control reminders for melee attacks, defense, and the player’s ranged attack.

All of that is way too much information. The UI is insanely cluttered, and hideous because of it. It’s like playing an MMO and having all your hotkeys displayed on screen at all times. Hotel Barcelona throws the player into combat with no explanation for anything. This is obviously intentional, but there’s way too much information to sift through. The player has to go into the pause menu and read a bunch of tutorials to figure out what everything means. It’s all very off-putting.

Co-op and PvP

Hotel Barcelona has a few multiplayer options. A player can host an online co-op session, and keep the progress made from having a friend help out. Or a player can invade someone else’s game to mess them up and steal their items. The multiplayer makes for a fun addition, but the core of the gameplay is in single player roguelite runs.

I really wanted to love Hotel Barcelona. It has such an interesting presentation and game world. But its gameplay is just plain awful. It has a generic roguelite structure, and controlling Justine feels abysmal. The UI is also an overcluttered eyesore. I hope fans of SWERY and SUDA51 find something to love in Hotel Barcelona. But as it is, I just can’t recommend a game that plays this horribly.

***PS5 code provided by the publisher***