I Can’t Stop Playing OTXO – Review

gamepur.com:

Stephen King is the master of writing stories that take an unassuming location like a mansion or a hotel room and twist them into an abomination that threatens to collapse on itself with you at the center. OTXO embodies this, pulling you into a world of high-octane gunplay, creeping dread, and yearning for a life and time that’s long since seen the sun set on its shores forever.

Ever since I started OTXO, I haven’t been able to put it down. It’s frustrating in many ways, but the core gameplay loop, banging experimental electronic soundtrack, and similarities to my favorite author’s works kept pulling me back in. The game was included in our April 2023 indie game spotlight, and I’m so pleased to be able to say that it does not disappoint.

Let’s get this out of the way now: OTXO looks a lot like the Hotline Miami games. If you took that franchise and stripped out every color apart from red, black, and white, OTXO is what you’d see. That’s where the similarities end though. While very clearly visually inspired by a franchise that elevated indie games so much in the past, OTXO iterates on every other element to give you a completely different experience.

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The game’s story revolves around your protagonist putting on a mask and finding themselves on a beach during an endless twilight. There’s a hotel, and if they approach, they’ll meet a questionable cast of characters who are all dripping with personality, but none of them will really tell you what’s happening. Each one knows they’re trapped, like you, and that the hotel has its own dark secrets keeping you all here. You’ve got to fight to its heart to escape, and that is far from easy.

At its core,