Suda51 And Swery Are Working Together On An Indie Horror Game Called Hotel Barcelona

IGN Japan just hosted a livestream for Travis Monday Nightro 2, which just appeared to be a way for No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda and Deadly Premonition creator Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro to announce a collaboration together in the most casual and on-brand way imaginable.

The pair of eccentric game developers revealed that they've been meeting since 2018 to discuss working on a game together, but they always end up getting too drunk to remember what was said so this livestream is a way for them to capture video evidence of their discussion. Booze was still involved and, frankly, the whole thing was kind of amazing.

The game in question is an indie horror game codenamed Hotel Barcelona, which Suda51 came up with half an hour before the stream began because he'd like the game to take you to the Spanish city. He later backtracked, though, saying Hotel Barcelona could take place in Tokyo, South Africa, or Venezuela. It's inspired by the 2004 horror game Siren, and Swery also mentioned David Lynch and Season 3 of Twin Peaks as inspirations because they're about "suspense, uncertainty, and nervousness." They want the game to be "light and easy to play" with Nintendo Switch and mobile mentioned as potential platforms. Discussions have apparently taken place with publisher Devolver Digital, too, which is offering the pair a $1 million budget to make the game--although this is news to Devolver.

Obviously Hotel Barcelona is in the early, early stages of development considering the livestream is essentially a brainstorming session. It might be about a magazine writer visiting a hip new hotel, but the translator made it clear not to take this for the final word on anything. The pair did place an emphasis on timelines, though, and how the game would be about the different rooms of the hotel. "Each [room] represents a different person, or a different dimension, or a different look at what happens in this period of time." Swery also tweeted that Jukio Kallio--known for his work on Minit, Nuclear Throne, and Celeste--is interested in composing music for Hotel Barcelona.

The whole stream is worth watching either way if you enjoy seeing two game developers get drunk, make jokes about bread, eat hotdogs with chopsticks, and pull out their phones to text and ask Silent Hill and Siren creator, Keiichirō Toyama, if he would like to work on the game with them. Spoiler alert: he said yes.