Hotel Barcelona Review (PS5) – Trouble In Paradise?
I don’t think there’s a more left-field pair of developers than SWERY65 and SUDA51. Both known for their cult hits, such as Lollipop Chainsaw, No More Heroes, and the Deadly Premonition series, respectively, Hotel Barcelona is the result of their provocative minds coming together. And it’s just about as much of each other’s identity as you’d expect; colourfully gritty, eyerollingly edgy and an acquired taste, to say the least. Hotel Barcelona looks to be digging up the remains of Grindhouse cinema – a cinematic movement that hasn’t been touched since the pair of prolific directors, Tarantino and Rodriques, created their Grindhouse double feature.
Developed by SWERY65’s White Owls team, with SUDA51 being the mind behind the concept and playing an advisory role, Hotel Barcelona is a 2.5D action roguelite, if roguelites were popular in the early ’00s. What I mean by that is the game’s not afraid to be stand-off-ish and difficult in its opening hours. There are also some retro-feeling gameplay design quirks that, if you aren’t checked in, it may be an early check-out for you. But how was my stay at Hotel Barcelona? Let’s go full board with it, shall we?
RIP Advisor
You are rookie US Marshall Justine, who’s been tasked to investigate Hotel Barcelona, a hotel in the middle of nowhere, said to be harbouring some of the worst criminals in America. The hotel itself is unsurprisingly modelled after the infamous Overlook Hotel; however, instead of just one psycho wandering the halls, there are said to be dozens of convicted murderers hiding away in there. After a sudden crash on the drive there, Justine awakens in one of the rooms, but not alone.
Somehow, she’s been possessed by a serial killing spirit who has his own gripes with his serial killing peers. His possession brings forth a power that manifests when you go out on these hunts for other serial killers. Justine is a different person when she transforms during each run of one of the stages; her timid personality is gone, and instead she embodies an eyepatch-wearing, fiery badass with phantom powers.
This also narratively threads Hotel Barcelona’s gameplay framework of being a roguelite. If you succeed or fail a run of a level, you wake back up unpossessed and struggling to remember what happened during your “dream”. The two didn’t have to tangentially make sense, but it sets up why it’s a roguelite nicely as opposed to it being a popular genre right now.
Come And Play With Us
It’s a tough onboarding process, however. Taking on the horror film-inspired levels before upgrading a sizable skill tree, you’re really left with the bare bones – not even a parry. These bare bones are your melee attack (light and heavy), a guard and a range weapon. Hacking and slashing builds up a meter as you collect your foe’s blood. The more you collect and don’t slow down in your slaughtering, the better your stamina and attacks become, as well as the ability to perform your ultimate ability – the Carnival Awakening.
But Hotel Barcelona has a tough time explaining this to you, as the story is taking precedence over it. Instead, you’ve got one of the busiest HUDs I think I’ve played, potentially ever? On-screen, you’ll have multiple multipliers, your health/stamina, your Carnival Awakening gauge, which is a skull filling with blood, bottom centre stage on the screen, alongside the flailing limbs, bloody splattering and multiple forms of currencies spurting from your dead enemies.
It’s overwhelming, but I did become accustomed to it once I got a grasp of Hotel Barcelona’s many facets. The game plays like your standard roguelite affair; you’ll dash through stages, killing as much as you can and at the end of the stage is a big old boss battle. The bosses, as well as the levels, are themed after some iconic ’80s horror, which is a delight for a horror nerd like me.
No Room Service
It’s not all a bloody bliss when you’re stuck in the action, though, as Hotel Barcelona’s controls are a lot of what increases the difficulty. They’re pretty unresponsive if you want to play reactively, like dodging or parrying attacks, and outside of a few combos that you’ll unlock, it relies heavily on you button-mashing your way out of the hordes of some really basic enemy types.
This also makes for some of the game’s limited amount of platforming a little arduous. You’ll lose your Carnival Awakening gauge if you get wet; a lot of the environmental traps take a good chunk of your health, alongside stunning you sometimes, making even the game’s ‘Normal’ difficulty feel like a gauntlet. However, despite these glaring problems I had to overcome, Hotel Barcelona really opens up once you’ve upgraded a bit and found a weapon you like that you’ve managed to enhance.
Alongside lowering the difficulty, there’s also a unique mechanic to Hotel Barcelona to assist you that’s great in theory but decent in practice. Upon death and returning to the stage, your previous run acts as a Phantom whilst you play. It repeats your inputs verbatim, and with enemy placements relatively being the same, they can do a lot of the heavy slashing for you.
You Can’t Die, You Can Never Die!
The downside is that they disappear if you don’t go through the same door as your last run. Each stage will have a few doors, all with their own buff like HP Recovery or a Phantom Attack boost, kind of how roguelites give you modifiers to choose from. Going a different route doesn’t change much, but the buffs you incur influence your decision in a way that keeps each run feeling fresh.
There are also a good handful of melee and ranged weapons to choose from, all with their own stats and buffs you can unlock once you enhance them, making Hotel Barcelona a fairly decent rougelite to experiment with builds in. Alongside that, each run is dictated by the time of day and the position of the moon, which can buff or debuff your run from the starts. Some runs, you might be giant in stature, making you formidable, whilst others could be pitch black, making you fumble around in the dark.
Like I mentioned earlier, there’s so much going on here and not enough explanation that it hampers the actual gameplay experience. Maybe instead of throwing the whole kitchen sink and refining just a handful of the game’s elements would have made it feel less haphazard, but I can’t deny that it’s kind of what White Owls is known for.
Checked Out
It’s come out of the gate feeling a little outdated, and whilst some of Hotel Barcelona’s ideas are cool in theory, I don’t think I’d have missed them if they weren’t here. However, despite all that, I was approaching the game’s credits, and I couldn’t help but have a stupid smile on my face. There’s a little bit of crass writing here and there, some characterisations that feel like SWERY61 firing back at his criticisms for Deadly Premonition 2, but it’s undeniably a pulpy and engaging romp.
Not to mention Hotel Barcelona’s art direction is really cool. Aspects like the character portraits during discussions and the boss designs feel particularly inspired. And then you have the pulsing punk music that matches this whole grizzly Grindhouse aesthetic. Hotel Barcelona is by no means perfect, but it feels like it’s swinging for the fences in every facet.
Much like last year’s Slitterhead, with its flawed yet inspired gameplay and incomparable aesthetics, Hotel Barcelona has that finesse which will really suck people in, like myself. At about 7 hours to roll credits, with a ton more things to unlock like secret stages, costumes and more upgrades in New Game+, I feel like my stay at Hotel Barcelona will stay with me, for good and bad.
Hotel Barcelona is out 26th September 2025 for PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam.
Developers: White Owls Inc.
Publisher: CULT Games
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.
Make sure to follow Finger Guns on our social channels. Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Spotify or Apple Podcasts – to keep up to date on our news, reviews and features.
