Midnight Animal
Midnight Animal | |
---|---|
Dennaton Games (planned) | |
Release | Abandoned |
Midnight Animal (officially known later in development as Midnight Animal: a Story of Love and Forgetting in Four Parts) was a planned fan-made
Gameplay
Midnight Animal was going to play similarly to that of Hotline Miami,
Midnight Animal would have taken place thirty years after the events of
Development
Midnight Animal was being developed by Spencer Yan. The games creator was given special permission from Dennaton Games to use the source code of the original games and offered to publish the result on Steam, on the condition that the game was free and the source code remained secret. Additions to the game engine not featured in the original games included a dynamic lighting engine. The game was also planned to feature new, unique music from the composers featured in the original games.[3][4] The mod was first revealed in September 2015 via a trailer, and the game was posted onto Steam Greenlight. The game had a planned release date of 18 August 2016. Yan and publications such as PCGamesN referred to the game as an unofficial "Hotline Miami 3".[5][3][6]
In June 2016, the mod was delayed indefinitely, with Yan citing health problems as the reason in a now deleted
Eventually, the games updated visuals were spread around 4chan, where some members of the Persona community joined in on attacking Yan and accused him of tracing assets from Persona 5. Some users of 4chan joined in on the attacking as well, with some of it degrading into racism and antisemitism, in which Yan retaliated with similar remarks. Eventually, the mod was abandoned and de-facto cancelled by Yan by 2019, with the remaining work being split into different projects. Following the cancellation of Midnight Animal, Yan moved on from the community and apologized for his comments. He has labelled Midnight Animal as an "unmentionable failure", and that the aftermath made him "feel like a fucking failure". While Yan continued to engage on message boards and began work on a new project, the Steam page for the mod was taken down.[5] In August 2023, the source code for the abandoned mod was released by Yan.[7]
References
- ^ a b c Barrett, Ben (February 29, 2016). "Midnight Animal is a fan-made 'standalone mod' of Hotline Miami with approval from original devs". PCGamesN. Retrieved August 1, 2023.
- ^ a b Onyett, Charles (October 27, 2012). "Hotline Miami Review". IGN. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
- ^ a b c d Wong, Alistair (March 11, 2016). "Midnight Animal, Developer-Approved Mod Of Hotline Miami, Coming In August". Siliconera. Retrieved August 1, 2023.
- ^ a b "Le Mod du mois : Midnight Animal, le Hotline Miami 3 adoubé par Dennaton - Dossier : Modding à la pelle #2 : Skyrim devient fou, GTA 5 est magnifié et Hotline Miami 3 débarque". Jeuxvideo.com (in French). March 2, 2016. Retrieved August 1, 2023.
- ^ a b c d Reuben, Nic (August 13, 2019). "The messy story behind the Hotline Miami mod that never was". Eurogamer. Retrieved August 1, 2023.
- ^ "Midnight Animal : un fan développe la suite de Hotline Miami 2". Jeuxvideo.com (in French). March 1, 2016. Retrieved August 1, 2023.
- ^ Yan, Spencer [@spncryn] (August 17, 2023). "A long time ago, when I first started making games, I worked on a mod called Midnight Animal. It was very different from the stuff I make now, but, in many ways, it set the foundation for the developer I am today. The source code is now public:" (Tweet). Retrieved March 3, 2024 – via Twitter.