Procedural content generation of level layouts for Hotline Miami

Hotline Miami is a series of 80s themed arcade shoot-em-up games. In early 2016, a beta level editor was provided for the second release in the series which is utilized in this paper as a basis for a Procedural Content Generation (PCG) method for level development. We provide an evolutionary algorithm for the placement of rooms and examine a number of statistical measures for the outcome of our representation and it is classified as part of an existing PCG taxonomy. The level generator demonstrates control of the features in the developed levels based upon a set of representative fitness functions. This is a step towards a full level creator, and is implemented in a commercial game and is not just a technical demo.