If you were hoping for the never-coming Hotline Miami 3, allow this to cover your disappointment. Midnight Animal is made by solo developer Spencer Yan as a sequel to Hotline Miami 2, both in terms of developing past its storyline and adding more knobs and dials to its gameplay. It recently hit Steam Greenlight and is due for release in August this year, now officially recognised and approved by Dennaton. It also won’t cost a penny.

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It even has its own overly loud, massively violent psychedelic trailer:

Perhaps best of all, Yan is planning to create a new soundtrack with the help of the original composers, as well as some new artists. Given the one part of Hotline Miami nobody has ever taken issue with is the brilliant OST, that can only be a good thing.

As for the game itself, he wants to continue on from where Hotline Miami 2 left off, a couple of decades (spoilers) post-apocalypse, with illuminati-ish organisation 50 Blessings having taken over the United States. It sounds more linear in that respect than HLM’s previous incarnations, dealing with only a single character in a timeline that proceeds in the ordinary direction.

Yan plans to have roughly the same number of levels as the original game, but with far more interactable elements and dialogue, claiming it will have a greater number than both games combined. The same is true of weapons, which he has added to significantly for specific placement in levels, as well as coming as unique attributes of newly-created characters.

It’ll be completely free, and you can support the project through voting for it on Greenlight, where there’s also a bunch more information. Alternatively, Yan has a Patreonthat won’t be gating access to any content regarding the game, but will have its own rewards. He also irregularly blogson game design philosophies and his plans for how to handle different bits of Midnight Animal.