Hotel Barcelona is a gory onslaught of classic horror-inspired enemies. The newly-announced side-scrolling Soulslite is the newest game from both Hidetaka “SWERY” Suehiro and Goichi “Suda51” Suda, two developers who specialize in delightfully devilish, off-kilter games that wear their inspirations on their sleeves. SWERY’s Deadly Premonition and its sequel Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise comprise a duology of Twin Peaks pastiche, featuring small-town murder mysteries, eccentric detectives, and old ladies with fortunetelling pots. Suda’s No More Heroes series stars the otaku gamer-turned-assassin Travis Touchdown, who’s been known to debate the merits of Final Fantasy 7 with his targets before finishing them off.
The first trailer for Hotel Barcelona dropped at Tokyo Game show, as part of the Xbox presentation on September 21, 2023. It’s due out next year, with Suda fresh off the conclusion to his stylish action series, No More Heroes 3, and SWERY living The Good Life in his latest and greatest town sim/murder mystery. Suda devised the original concept for the game, and SWERY wrote and directed it based on his ideas. The trailer takes players through a preview of various combat scenarios, showing giant bosses, hilariously parodic enemies, and brutal, hack-and-slash circular saw action. These are all the horror movies it’s been shown to reference so far.
9 The Shining
While there’s no one, concrete reference to The Shining contained in the trailer, its title and concept is a reference to the supernatural Overlook Hotel from the Stephen King novel, later adapted into a film by director Stanley Kubrick. Like the Overlook, the Hotel Barcelona exists out of time. It appears to serve as a gateway to many different worlds, each of which is torn directly from the pages of a horror script. Hotel Barcelona is decidedly different from The Overlook, which is more of a temporal anomaly containing memorial manifestations of all the sordid affairs it’s ever seen. But SWERY admits to being inspired by The Shining‘s creepy setting.
8 Friday The 13th
Hotel Barcelona includes a boss based on Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th series, only the game’s own Jacob swaps the hockey mask for a football helmet and the machete for a giant, spiked baseball bat. In case that wasn’t enough, Jacob’s voice lines reference a spooky summer camp, complete with a cursed lake. In another scene, the protagonist of Hotel Barcelona fights an enemy wearing a cut-out pillowcase and swinging a wood ax, referencing Jason’s look in Friday the 13th Part 2. The official Friday the 13th game may have been killed by its online-only status, but Jason lives in Hotel Barcelona‘s tongue-in-cheek boss battles.
7 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Hotel Barcelona puns on another slasher classic with the Texas Chain Saw Massacre parody Chainsaw Sausage from Hell. Its take on Leatherface, who appears to be named Nigel, looks a little different. Instead of the cobbled-together mask, he wears a chef’s toque and carries an enormous bone saw. His custom wheelchair is also tricked out with a pair of red-hot flamethrowers. Nigel’s hunger for blood will surely make lunch meat of many a player when Hotel Barcelona is released.
6 Alien
Debates rage on over whether Alien is actually a horror movie or a science fiction one, but Hotel Barcelona‘s ceiling-hugger Eve puts it firmly in the horror camp. Like the Xenomorphs in the Alien franchise, Eve sports an elongated head, while green-glowing chest appendages add to its Freudian facade. Eve hangs in place from the ceiling, a stationary, whole-room boss with apparent weak points at its arms. The protagonist can also be seen fighting smaller versions of similar enemies, so it’s safe to say Hotel Barcelona cleaves closer to the more densely populated Alien sequels than the 1979 original.
5 Jaws
If giant, killer sharks didn’t seem like a good enough reason to stay out of the water, Hotel Barcelona has got things covered. Its spin on Jaws features a murderous, mechanized great white, complete with cannons in its mouth. Dr. Evil. Hotel Barcelona‘s shark, named Zillion, harks back to the complicated animatronic shark prop used in shooting Jaws, notorious for its on-set malfunctions that delayed production. But the Tesla coils attached to its head reference a different kind of movie entirely, making it look more like an invention of Austin Powers‘ Dr. Evil.
4 Silent Hill
At once a nod to a film series and one of the best psychological horror video games of all time, Hotel Barcelona also contains a reference to Silent Hill. In the halls of the hotel, the protagonist is swarmed by enemies dressed as French maids. They don’t look quite like Silent Hill‘s nefarious nurses, but they have a similar move set, bending over backwards to deal damage to the player. It’s a minor detail and definitely different from Silent Hill, but the animation is similar enough to be intentional.
3 The Silence Of The Lambs
Hotel Barcelona also contains references to the recurring horror antagonist Hannibal Lecter, most memorably portrayed by Sir Anthony Hopkins in the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs. Lecter is a serial cannibal known for his daring escape attempts, so he’s often placed in exaggerated restraints. Hotel Barcelona‘s as-yet unnamed, straitjacketed character appears in several levels, and unlike many of the other imported antagonists on this list, looks more like a summonable ally than a boss. In other parts of the game, he’s shown wearing a muzzled mask, wheeled around on a modified dolly resembling the one Lecter uses in one of Silence of the Lambs‘ most iconic scenes.
2 Child’s Play
Hotel Barcelona‘s killer doll is less Cabbage Patch Kid and more Baby Born, but the influence is obvious. Based on Child’s Play, the quintessential movie about treacherous toys, Hotel Barcelona features an overgrown baby doll as one of its bosses. The doll, named Bradley, has all the bells and whistles, including rows of razor sharp teeth and those creepy, “realistic” moving eyelids. Scarred, dismembered, and shoddily sewn back together, Bradley was clearly at one point a well-loved toy. He can use his toy truck to run over the competition, or summon colorful blocks from the sky by clapping his hands.
Those are all the horror-inspired enemies and settings confirmed to be included in Hotel Barcelona, but more are sure to come in the full release. Art of the titular hotel, showing dollhouse-like cutouts of many of its rooms, show lodgings made up in Space Age style, creepily inhuman portraits, and an Exorcist-worthy staircase, so there’s certainly more in store. Players can check into Hotel Barcelona when it releases on Xbox Series X/S in 2024.
