This free fangame blends Hotline Miami with Team Fortress 2

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.

Looking for more freebies? Check out our list of the best free PC games to play in 2022.