Hotel Barcelona is “under new management,” which is bold way of letting players know that the roguelite had underwent some hefty renovation.
The new update overhauls various aspects of the game, from game balance to multiplayer experience as well as better onboarding and quality of life improvements. The press release says it’s “not a routine patch. This is a structural refinement of the player experience.”
Here are the bullet points of what’s improved with the Hotel Barcelona “Under New Management” update:
- Combat, Flow, and Player Control
- Faster recovery from attacks with expanded cancel timing into jump, dodge, guard, and follow up attacks
- Reduced stamina friction and shortened attack animations for a more aggressive combat rhythm
- Increased base dodge distance and rebalanced dodge skills
- Fully reworked parry system. Precise guard timing now triggers parries and rewards HP Recovery Orbs
- Guard now consumes stamina, creating meaningful defensive decisions
- Multiple new parry skills added to the skill tree. Skill layout and progression reworked
- New skill “Enhancement Luck+” added
- Weapon balance adjustments including Flamethrower AP tuning
- Enemy and Stage Rebalancing
- Enemy HP, attack ranges, and reaction timing adjusted across multiple types
- Phantom Lost removed from Normal difficulty and below
- Boss durability and behaviour adjustments for Jacob, Nigel, and Eve
- Terrain, camera distance, and door placement improvements in key stages
- Invasion Multiplayer Improvements
- Reduced imbalance caused by player progression differences
- Improved parry reactions between players
- Doppelgängers can no longer invade during boss fights
- Doppelgängers no longer interfere with enemies or environmental systems
- Matchmaking and multiplayer UI improvements
- Quality of Life and Performance
- Optimised performance across the entire game
- DUALSHOCK controller support added
- Prologue tutorial, layout, and UI improvements
- Dialogue autoplay added
- Extensive UI, localisation, boss fight, journal, animation, and achievement fixes
In addition, the update adds five new crossover skins for free, featuring recent indie titles. The skins are:
- Demonschool Faye – A cult indie crossover presence inside the nightmare hotel
- Slitterhead Alex – A horror infused guest skin with a sharp silhouette in combat
- Slitterhead Julee – A second Slitterhead crossover that stands out immediately in motion
- Promise Mascot Agency Pinky – A surreal mascot dropped into violent horror for striking contrast
- Promise Mascot Agency Michi – A companion mascot skin that heightens the absurdity of the setting
Hotel Barcelona is the latest game by White Owls, created by Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro and Goichi “Suda51” Suda. As Justine, you are traversing through a 2.5D action horror roguelite set in a hotel with procedurally-generated layout. Dying in a run leaves a Slasher Phantom that fights alongside you in future runs, Super Time Force-style. It also has multiplayer invasions.
Hotel Barcelona is an odd, quirky indie game from the minds of two of the most prolific video game auteurs from Japan, and as seen by the lengthy patch note, can be a bit rough. But if you vibe with either Swery or Suda51’s body of work, you’ll find their shared vision of a surreal slasher madhouse of a roguelite something worth playing still. And this update should nudge you again to try it out if you haven’t.
Hotel Barcelona is out now on PS5, PC (steam) and Xbox Series X|S.