Before starting development, the developers wanted inspiration, so they watched some movies like Kick-Ass, Drive and Cocaine Cowboys. They wanted to raise questions about what it meant to kill a virtual person in a video game. Mid-way through development, Söderström worried that he was running out of money, so he started Hotline Miami. They spent 9 months in an apartment coding the game. Dennis Wedin said this about the development of the game: "It was fucking hard...". 