“Become a coked-up John Wick who can turn an entire Vegas hotel into a stage for improvised carnage.”
That’s what the developer of Jackal, a “violent and unhinged murder simulator” that has a new demo on Steam, describes their game as. And after playing the demo, I can wholeheartedly concur with that assessment.
Sporting the same sort of gameplay style as Hotline Miami, along with the same sort of ultraviolence, Jackal is set in 1970s Las Vegas and has a gorgeous art style to go along with its blood-soaked rooms and swaths of nameless goons for you to viciously annihilate.
The coolest part of Jackal, to me, is how the rooms are randomly generated, so no two fights are the same. Combine that with unlockable drug superpowers and modifiers that stack, and this game feels like the Hotline Miami evolution that I didn’t know I’ve been waiting for.
Jackal is the fifth game from creator Michał Marcinkowski’s Transhuman Design, and first since 2020’s Soldat 2. The dev lists Hotline Miami as direct inspiration for the game, along with I Am Your Beast, Pulp Fiction, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Goodfellas, and Cowboy Bebop.
I haven’t played any other “murder simulators” outside of Hotline Miami. Are there any others that you’re a fan of? This game and others like it scratch a certain satisfying gameplay itch when it comes to the top-down perspective, using different weapons to incapacitate foes, and speed-running levels. There’s already a speedrun option from the demo’s main menu, to go along with its campaign and narrative.
You can play a pretty generous amount of different levels of Jackal in its Steam demo right now, and you can wishlist it to be in the know for when it launches in early 2026.
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Published: Sep 16, 2025 10:14 am