It’s brutal work, but someone has to do it. I amble downstairs and into my Delorean and make my way to the Metro. The list of “ingredients” is really some instructions – I have to get a briefcase and leave it in a dumpster, and that someone is watching me. I should read them carefully, it tells me. A mysterious answering machine recording states that its name is “Tim” at the bakery, and that the cookies he’s left for me contain a list of “ingredients”. What’s happening? And what happened to me to make me like this? April the 3rd is the day we met, I am told by chicken.

They talk like they know me – know who I am. I am being questioned by a horse, a chicken, and an owl. What follows is a recount of my time in this perversion of the Magic City. This 16-bit slice of pastel time is a top-down action/real-time-strategy/survival horror/twin-stick shooter with the heart of a twitch puzzler slowly rotting in the back garden. It’s okay, it’s just Hotline Miami, developed by the two-man studio Dennaton and published by Devolver Digital. I like it when publishers have an active sense of humour.

Any day you wake up to an email addressed “Potential Murder Victim” is going to be interesting.

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