When asked to offer advice for other players creating their own levels, Wedin offered: “I like levels where you can walk through it stealthy… but don’t have to.” ed.) You can’t change the behavior of guards. (And who would want to? The soundtrack is fantastic.

The level editor is handicapped in a specific, interesting way: You can only make levels that feel like they belong in that universe. “Fans will make the next Hotline experiences for as long as they’re willing.”īut there are limits. The level editor is intended as a gift to fans because, well, there won’t be any more Hotline after this, Wilden says. In other words, you won’t find levels curiously disappearing or getting flagged a la, say, Little Big Planet. “You’re making levels for friends,” Wedin said. Wedin commented there won’t be too much fussing around with curation or gatekeeping stuff. That said, there will reportedly be YouTube tutorials forthcoming once the game hits to explain how it works.Īppropriately, there aren’t a ton of details readily available around the level editor just yet. “We wanted to show the basics,” explained Wedin. If you want kitchen shit, you have to search “kitchen.” But you won’t, say, find “blender” or whatever by searching for “kitchen.” There’s a fair amount of customization (selecting the color of the bricks, the spawning points of enemies, etc.), but there’s no meta data for anything. You can’t copy and paste rooms or larger chunks of levels you have to painstakingly search for assets and plunk them in as you see fit. Mario Paint comes to mind-not only for its spartan nature, but also because it is outmoded and proud of it.

Like its corresponding game, the map editor is barebones.

In an air conditioned van-super-appropriate for the getaway smash ‘n’ grab feel for the burgeoning series-developer Dennis Wedin walked passengers through how Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number’s map editor works. Not just violence, but the embrace of simpler games, simpler times, and if what it showed at E3 at publisher Delvolver Digital’s event in the Hooters parking lot (really) is any indication, just plain simplicity as well. Hotline Miami is making it cool for kids to love violence again.

Hotline miami 2 levels