Hotel Barcelona’s launch was a rough one; there’s no denying it (check out our review here). The disconnect between its creative vision and its technical execution resulted in an impasse. While many praised its fever-dream aesthetic and unique horror-parody concept, the core gameplay felt broken and unpleasant at launch. The collab project between Hidetaka “SWERY” Suehiro, aka Sweary65, and Goichi Suda, aka Suda51, seemed to have too much of the artsy presentation that Sweary is known for and too little of the gameplay mechanics Suda is known for in titles like ‘Killer7’ and ‘No More Heroes’.
With the self-published ‘Under New Management’ update, developer White Owls aims to bridge this gap. It’s essentially a soft relaunch that brings a structural refinement to the game, addressing gameplay issues and adding quality of life improvements to refine the existing experience. It is now live on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.
Sweary65 Under the Pretense of Suda51
The central tension of Hotel Barcelona has always been its identity. It was billed as a “dream team” slasher parody, promising the surreal narrative beats of Swery with the hyper-violent action of Suda51.
Before this update, the game was stuck in a conflict as it leaned too heavily on “vibes” to excuse mechanical mediocrity. It wanted to be a high-octane hack-and-slash but played with the stiffness of a survival horror tank-control game. The clunky, awkward combat wasn’t what people wanted, and it really frustrated the audience.
The update attempts to align the gameplay with the “Suda” side of the DNA. By speeding up the rhythm and adding animation cancels, it finally acknowledges that a game about slaughtering movie monsters needs to feel empowering, not laborious. It is trying to shed the “euro-jank” stigma to become a competent 2.5D action roguelite
What Can Players Expect
Starting with the big one, the sluggishness of combat is largely gone. Attack animations are shorter, and—crucially—you can now cancel attacks into jumps or dodges. This creates a snappier flow where you aren’t locked into a swinging animation while an enemy winds up a cheap hit.
The second most welcoming change is that guarding now consumes stamina, forcing you to be intentional. However, precise timing rewards you with HP Recovery Orbs. This turns defense into a resource-management mechanic rather than a passive safety net.
Besides that, there are multiple QoL updates and technical fixes that have been added. The game now runs at a steady locked frame rate in comparison to the launch version, which showed occasional drops, halving the frame rate at times. The one I liked the most is the addition of support for DualSense controllers on PC, as I only own DualSense controllers.
Another decent addition to the game is the collaboration; character skins from indies like Slitterhead, Demonschool, and my favorite indie game of last year, Promise Mascot Agency, are available for free and unlocked from the start.
The last notable improvement that I could not test was the reduced imbalance caused by player progression differences in multiplayer modes. Developers have stated that parry reaction times between players have been improved. To make online boss fights bearable, doppelgängers can no longer invade during boss fights and can no longer interfere with enemies or environmental systems. For a speedy session, unlike GTA Online player lobbies, matchmaking times and multiplayer UI have been improved as well.
Better Combat Doesn’t Fix Bad Luck.
While the feel of the combat is better, the bones of the game remain brittle in places. For starters, when I booted the game after so long to check the update, all of my saves were gone. I did not see any other players facing this issue, and certainly cannot blame it on this update, but I am also not quite sure what caused this. Was it an issue with Steam Cloud saves, or was it because I may have been playing a pre-release review build? I guess we’ll never know. Thankfully, I did manage to find a completed save to replay some of the content.
These things aside, the biggest and probably unchangeable issue that remains is that the core loop still relies on randomized events (like forced character size changes or weather effects) that can trigger early in a run. If you get a bad roll on floor one, your run feels doomed regardless of how well you parry. This structural unfairness hasn’t been fully ironed out.
Despite the rebalanced boss behaviors (specifically for Jacob, Nigel, and Eve), I was getting “two-shotted” by mini-bosses. The line between “challenging” and “stat-check” remains blurry, with some enemies feeling squishy one moment and tanky the next.
And lastly, the issue that bugged me the most, even at launch: essential mechanics (like healing) are still gated behind specific doors/rooms, making early-game survival feel more like a lottery than a skill test. This system is super awakward and they should have considered going down the normal path – using consumables instead.
Check In or Stay Away?
If you bounced off Hotel Barcelona because it felt “clunky” or “unresponsive,” it is time to reinstall. The combat changes are transformative enough to make the moment-to-moment gameplay fun.
However, if your issue was with the roguelike structure itself—the repetitive level layouts, the punishing RNG, or the sensation that the game wastes your time—the “Under New Management” sign is mostly cosmetic. The hotel is cleaner, but the ghosts are still the same.
