Hotline Miami is a top-down shooter video game by Jonatan Söderström and Dennis Wedin, collectively known as Dennaton Games. The game was published by Devolver Digital and released on 23 October 2012 for Microsoft Windows.
Set in 1989 Miami, the game revolves primarily around an unnamed silent protagonist—dubbed “Jacket” by fans—who has been receiving coded messages on his answering machine instructing him to commit massacres against the local Russian mafia. The game blends top-down perspective with stealth, extreme violence and surreal storytelling, along with a soundtrack and visuals inspired by 1980s culture. The game itself was influenced in part by Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 neo-noir crime film Drive, as well as the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys.
At release, the game received critical acclaim, with praise regarding its narrative, themes, music and gameplay. Hotline Miami has since become a cult video game, and cited as the highly influential of independent video games. A sequel, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, was released on 10 March 2015.
