Play Hotline Money, starting with the free demo

Starting a session tonight

There are two ways to begin with Hotline Money.

The first is the demo. It loads in the frame near the top of this page, opens straight away, and gives you a fun balance of 10 000. The second is to go straight in with a real balance, which takes a few minutes of setup.

What to do in the demo

One run in a demo teaches little if you only watch the animation. Take three runs and give each one a job.

Run one: watch the order. Choose Easy and look at the pre-bet screen, which prints a maximum of x2031.63 for Easy and x54515.98 for Hard. Pick a door, watch the first step clear, and note that Withdraw is already live and the counter reads 1/30.

Run two: find your ceiling. Keep going until you are ready to stop, and note the number on the counter. It marks roughly where your instinct lands, and it is cheaper to learn that on a fun balance.

Run three: practise leaving. Take the exit early on purpose, while the run still looks promising. It is harder than it sounds. Withdrawing calmly on the fourth step is a habit that carries straight over to live sessions.

Then decide about pace

Turbo shortens the pauses inside a round. Autobet keeps rounds arriving without a tap between them. Both are toggles beside the stake controls, and both leave the number and order of steps as they are.

Try one run with Turbo on. If you like the faster pace, keep it. If it removes the pause you were using to think, turn it off.

Autobet suits a session where the stake and mode are already fixed and you would rather watch than tap. It asks for two settings, the step at which each round collects and the number of rounds, and then the client picks the path at random at each step. Once you have settled on a pace, take it to a live balance.

The menu inside the demo

The gear icon opens a short menu with Music and Sound toggles, the Rules of the game, the Provably Fair panel and Game limits. The rules list the 96% RTP and explain Auto Play, the Live, My and Top panels and the refund for game faults, so a minute there answers most first-session questions.

Moving to a live balance

The setup is short. Tap a button here on the device you intend to play on, make the account, set a deposit limit while you are already in the settings, fund the balance through the cashier, and load Hotline Money from the instant games list.

Lobbies usually list it with the instant titles rather than in the slot library. Searching the name is quicker.

The same account opens the game on an Android handset, an iPhone home screen, a tablet and a desktop, with one balance behind all of them.

What changes when it is real

The run stays the same. The doors, the 30 opponents, the boss, Withdraw, the two risk modes, Autobet and Turbo all work as they do in the demo.

What changes is how Withdraw feels. In the demo it is free to ignore. With a balance behind it, the ceiling you found on your second demo run will probably feel lower.

The format is built around that one choice, repeated at every step. Find out where your real ceiling is.

Keep one habit from the first night

Copy the fingerprint the client shows you before the round starts.

Hotline Money is Provably Fair, and every finished round returns a Round ID, a Salt and a Hash. The Hash is the piece whose value comes from holding it early, so noting it costs a second and makes the round checkable afterwards.

Do it once on a run that surprised you. The fairness page walks through the procedure.

Where to go next

The game page takes a single run apart in detail. The app, download, APK and iOS pages cover getting the game onto whatever screen you prefer. The casino page covers real-money play in full.

Or skip those and take a run. The demo is further up this page if you want a practice round first.