[3] At the beginning of each chapter, the player character "Jacket"[b] receives a message on his answering machine, instructing him to travel to a different part of Miami and kill all enemies at that location.

After each massacre, Jacket visits a store or a restaurant where a man known as Beard[c] meets him and gives away free items such as pizza, films, and alcoholic beverages.

During an assault on the estate of a film producer, Jacket rescues a girl and takes her to his apartment, nursing her back to good health and developing a romantic relationship with her.

After the encounter with Jacket depicted earlier[d] and various interrogations, he finds the source of the messages to be 50 Blessings, a group operated by two janitors that attempt to undermine an alliance between the Soviet Union and the United States, which they view as "anti-American".

[8][18] Hotline Miami was developed by Dennaton Games, a duo composed of designer and programmer Jonatan Söderström and artist Dennis Wedin.

The two collaborated in making a promotional game for the band, titled Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf, as well as a separate project named Life/Death/Island.

[23] With Wedin seeing potential in the concept after previously playing similar games like Gauntlet (1985) and Chaos Engine (1993),[24] the two began developing Hotline Miami.

[28] Although it was initially planned as a smaller project,[29] it expanded after development studio Vlambeer shared a demo with Devolver Digital, who offered to publish it.

[23] In a 2022 interview with Noclip, Wedin stated that they designed Hotline Miami as a game that they wanted to play, initially being unconcerned with what an average consumer or a critic would think of it.

According to him and Söderström, this design process allowed the team to determine what would "fit" the game or be liked by other players, based on whether or not they personally found it fun.

"[49] For the game's promotion, Dennaton purchased a phone number in the Miami area that allowed people to leave messages that would later be used in a trailer.

[52][53] In November 2012, an update was released that patched numerous bugs, added support for gamepads, and made minor graphical and gameplay adjustments.

Polygon's Chris Plante considered it similar to playing a sport, stating that it compensated for being repetitive by allowing the player to restart quickly, and found it addictive.

"[2] Saldana described it as an "introspective journey into the violence of video games", and that it had a "daring narrative style" that gained the attention of players.

[10] Cameron wrote that the game missed an "opportunity to make a point" and never properly explained why so many people were being killed, instead allowing the player to reflect on themselves.

[14] Eurogamer's Tom Brawell shared similar thoughts as O'Dwyer and Onyett, feeling that while the soundtrack was less impactful on its own, it tied in well with the other elements.

[8][90] Pitchfork's Nina Corcoran said that the upbeat soundtrack contributed to this by ratcheting the player's anxiety and increasing their focus, while also desensitizing them to the glorified violence.

[8] NME's Dom Peppiatt compared Hotline Miami's anti-violence commentary to be similar to A Clockwork Orange and American Psycho.

Each interrogates the player uniquely; Don Juan's dialogue includes lines like "knowing oneself means acknowledging one's actions," while Richard is more upfront, asking "do you like hurting other people?

[8][91] Luca Papale and Lorenzo Fazio suggested that the contrasting behaviors of the masked figures may represent dissociative identity disorder in Jacket.

[4] Similar thoughts were written by Marco Caracciolo of the University of Groningen, who said that the masked personas could possibly be "projections of Jacket's disturbed psyche."

He additionally wrote that the plot is "destined not to make any sense", citing the behavior of the masked figures as well as the contradictions between the perspectives of Jacket and the Biker.

[96][99] Hotline Miami's narrative and handling of violence have been considered by many journalists to be influential within the video game industry,[90][95][100] with an impact lasting into the 2020s.

[95] In a 2019 retrospective article from Vice's Cameron Kunzelman, he described Hotline Miami's anti-violence themes as an "emblem of a forgotten regime" alongside other games released at the time like Spec Ops: The Line.

He felt that since Hotline Miami's release, more video games had started treating violence as a method of demonstrating "seriousness" without a proper justification.

[90] Chris Tapsell of Eurogamer echoed similar thoughts as Kunzelman in 2024, describing Hotline Miami as the video game industry's "coming-of-age moment" and a point of self-reflection.

[95] Nina Corcoran of Pitchfork shared similar thoughts, and stated that the game was designed by Dennaton to be "incredibly replayable" several years later.

[96] Christopher Cruz of Rolling Stone described Hotline Miami as a "titan of indie gaming", one with an "impact [that] has reached far and wide".

[101] In the years since its release, Hotline Miami has often been considered to be one of the best video games ever made by the editorial teams of several magazines and media outlets.

It was released digitally over the course of several months and follows a protagonist named Chris, depicting events not considered canon to the main Hotline Miami story.