Software:Midnight Animal

Short description: Cancelled video game mod

Midnight Animal: A Story of Love and Forgetting in Four Parts (commonly referred to as simply Midnight Animal) was a planned fan-made standalone mod for the top-down shooter game Hotline Miami that was being developed by Spencer Yan. It was scheduled to release on 18 August 2016 and would have taken place 30 years after the events of Hotline Miami 2.

The games creator was given permission to use the source code of the original games by Dennaton Games and was officially recognized. After a shift in inspiration from the games creator and alleged tracing of art assets from Persona 5, the game experienced severe backlash from different communities. Following the controversy and personal problems with the games creator, the mod was de-facto cancelled in 2019.

On 17 August 2023, only a day away from the 7th anniversary of the mod's originally intended release date, the source code of The Document of Midnight Animal was made publicly available on GitHub.

Gameplay

The gameplay was going to be similar to that of Hotline Miami, with the player traversing various levels (referred to as "chapters") while massacring everyone inside. Unique to Midnight Animal, however, would have been the introduction of up to 60 weapons for the player to use. The game was intended to utilize more dialogue and interactive elements than the original games combined, while also having roughly the same amount of levels. The games combat system was also going to be redesigned to maximize player combat, and the game was going to feature a dynamic lighting engine.

While the plot of the mod is unknown, it was set to take place 30 years after the events of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number in a post-apocalyptic United States , ran by the conspiracy group 50 Blessings.

Development

The mod was being developed by Spencer Yan and was first revealed in September 2015 with the release of an official trailer, and the game was slated for an 18 August 2016. 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. Spencer Yan and publications such as PCGamesN referred to the game as an unofficial "Hotline Miami 3". The game was also planned to feature new, unique music from the composers of the original games.

In June 2016 the mod was delayed indefinitely, with Yan citing the reason being health problems in a now deleted Steam Community post. The game was abandoned for five months by the creator, and during this time, Spencer Yan would take heavy inspiration from the Persona series and began to incorporate it into Midnight Animal, renaming the project to Midnight Animal: a Story of Love and Forgetting in Four Parts and continuing development of the mod.

a Story of Love and Forgetting

In February 2017, Spencer Yan showcased the Story of Love and Forgetting to the community, which was met with fierce backlash. For the next few months, Spencer Yan's personal inbox became filled with criticism regarding the mods new anime-styled character portraits, escalating as far as death threats and usage of slurs. The harassment began taking a toll on Yan's mental state, and the games updated visuals eventually spread to 4chan, resulting in backlash from the Persona community over the tracing of Persona 5's character portraits. Criticism from 4chan degraded into racism and antisemitism, resulting in Yan to retaliate. The game was abandoned and de-facto cancelled by Yan, and the remaining work was split into other projects.

Following the cancellation of Midnight Animal, Spencer Yan moved on from the community and apologized for his anti-semetic 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 has been taken down. In August 2023, the source code for the abandoned mod was released by Yan.