Hotline Miami inspired a lot of topdown, ultraviolent copycats, most of which failed to replicate its propulsive action. Midnight Mercenaries does it better than most – while also being a free fangame that mixes that Hotline Miami structure with characters and weaponry from Team Fortress 2.
Here’s a trailer which lays it out:
Midnight Mercenaries really does hew closely to Hotline Miami. After a brief tutorial, you wake in your apartment and receive a phone call giving you an unusual job to do. You then bash your way through a building full of violent goons. You can knock them down with doors, throw your weapon at them, smash windows to surprise them – all that horrible, gory Hotline Miami stuff.
Except also you’re the Scout from Team Fortress 2, wielding his baseball bat. After finishing that first level you’ll be introduced to a house containing the other TF2 classes, and the second mission casts you as the Heavy with his machinegun at your disposal. Every class has a special move and some limitations; the Heavy will run out of ammo quickly and can’t reload, for example, but he can throw weapons faster than other classes.
It’s worth noting that there are bugs, but I didn’t encounter anything that couldn’t be resolved by instantly restarting one of the short levels. You’ll do that everytime you die, anyway, and I died lots.
Midnight Mercenaries is the work of “GermanPeter”, with help from other contributors, who have been working on it for five years. You can download it from Game Jolt.