Screenshots
Watch trailer on Steam ↗Hot Dog Reporter
Exquisite Trash Club · Published by Exquisite Trash Club · Official site ↗
Positive — 100% positive (13 reviews) · 7 achievements
Last updated 27 Sept 2026
A fast paced platformer about a hot dog in a hurry
£4.29
Lowest price we've ever recorded
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Price history
Action, Indie, Early Access · 2023 · More under £5 games
Navigate through quirky obstacles as a speedy hot dog in this action-packed indie game. Developed by Exquisite Trash Club and released in 2023, Hot Dog Reporter challenges your reflexes with its high-energy gameplay.
About this game
Hello!
Hot Dog Reporter is a (very early access) game about a hot dog in a hurry.
It's a fast paced platformer with a speedrun mode that will eventually turn into a metroidvania with a mystery to solve and charmingly weird characters to meet (and a speedrun mode). Once the linear levels are iterated on enough to finalize Hot Dog Reporter's mechanics, gameplay will begin to spill onto the sprawling, interconnected streets of New Yorkshire City. I already have a pretty firm grasp of the final narrative shape and visual direction, and I can't wait to share what's inside my head (and also inside like 500 word documents and photoshop files). Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for checking out Hot Dog Reporter.
Current features include:
Obsessively tuned movement mechanics influenced by some of my favorite platformers, including Celeste, Super Meat Boy, and Mega Man X.
An in game timer that tracks your fastest runs for each level, as well as a sum of best for your overall time.
Speedrun Mode, a non-stop race through every level in the game that tracks your fastest time.
Twelve levels exploring all the best ways to have fun with a fast moving hot dog.
A leaderboard to rank the best Speed Doggers on the planet.
Alternate hot dog skins
A killer bebop soundtrack to GET YOU MOVING!
We're currently working on:
New abilities to expand your repertoire and go EVEN FASTER.
Fresh levels with new mechanics to explore.
Artwork for more diverse levels and biomes.
Additional accessibility options.
Longer term plans:
A lovingly crafted story filled with memorable characters. Take Frankie Merguez through the streets, factories, nightlife, and dark underbelly of the city to get to the bottom of the mysterious disappearances haunting New Yorkshire City.
An expansive, interconnected map with fast travel.
Ability acquisition, allowing you to reach previously inaccessible areas and more quickly traverse the places you've already been.
More unlockable costumes for Frankie.
CUTE CATS!
Join the EXQUISITE TRASH CLUB Discord for updates, bug reports, and more!
HEADS UP: Hot Dog Reporter is currently in very early access and will have frequent save wipes and leaderboard wipes as levels get added and updated.
Credits
DESIGN / ART / PROGRAMMING / SFX
Angel Rivera
MUSIC
Do It, Seven, Open the Source, and Nobody Sleep
by Paolo Pavan
SOFTWARE
Godot Engine 4
Aseprite
Adobe Photoshop
Bfxr
Copyright © 2023 Exquisite Trash Club
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 7 and later (64-bit and 32-bit)
- Processor: Intel Core2 Duo E8400 or AMD Phenom II x2 550
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: GeForce GTX 260 or Radeon HD 4850
- Storage: 200 MB available space
Recommended
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
Supported Languages
Latest news
AnnouncementsOfficial
Hot Dog Reporter Gets Reported On
Hello friends!It's been a bit since the last update. Development hasn't been moving at quite the sentient-speedrunning-hot-dog pace that it initially was, BUT I have been plugging happily away at it for some time! Some currently unreleased updates include:New levels, hidden pettable friends, and a new biomeA new ground pound mechanicDitching the tutorial level in favor of in-level hintsLots (lots) of under the hood changes to improve performance and compatibility with different screen resolutions and operating systemsNarrative writing and concept artA new menu UI that may or may not make it into the next releaseMost of this is coming to the Steam release VERY SOON! I just want to iron out some bugs and make a few more levels so it feels like a more substantial update after such a long gap between releases.BUT, the reason I'm posting this now instead of alongside a content drop is that HOT DOG REPORTER IS IN THE NEWS!Hot Dog Reporter had the honor of being part of Toronto Games Week's kickoff event on Thursday June 12th. It was wild! I got to show off some of the new unreleased content! There was a 4 hour long lineup to play the game! A game dev hero of mine who I'm not going to namedrop got a new record on the first level! The actual mayor of Toronto came by and shouted "OH, A HOT DOG!" And then Toronto Life put Hot Dog Reporter in the same paragraph as A Short Hike!AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!ANYWAY, thank you so much for sticking around! I can't wait to share more REAL SOON!Read full article on Community Announcements (greatnewtons)Patch NotesOfficial
0.7.1 A Cache and a Loading Screen
Hello friends! Things have been pretty quiet here lately while I've been working away at artwork and narrative development, but TODAY we have an optimization and compatibility update. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF THIS UPDATE AFFECTS PERFORMANCE NEGATIVELY FOR YOU! This should be obvious in retrospect, but It turns out the Forward+ renderer in Godot leverages Vulkan and broke compatibility with some older hardware, so we've reverted back to the OpenGL renderer. OpenGL means no asynchronous shaders, which introduced micro freezes when activating the platform drop effect. To work around this, we now have a loading screen at the start to cache shaders. The up side to all of this for EVERYONE is that I went ahead and built a particle effect cache as well! Which means driver updates and fresh installations of Hot Dog Reporter will no longer result in second+ long freezes when a new particle effect triggers. Here, have a changelog! Changed Godot renderer back to Compatibility again. GPU particles in Forward+ were breaking the game on older hardware with limited/no Vulkan support. Particle effects and shaders are now cached at launch to avoid in-game stuttering. Added loading screen at launch for cache creation.Read full article on Community Announcements (Exquisite Trash Club)AnnouncementsOfficial
0.7.0: New levels! New mechanics! New art!
Hello friends! We've got LOTS of changes in this update! Highlights include NEW LEVELS, Steam Deck verification, new mechanics (including moving hazards, updrafts, and breakable boxes), pettable cats, and new artwork! Check out the full patch notes below: FULL DATA WIPE. This includes Save data, Options data, Input mapping data, and Ghost data. In addition to new levels, there’s a new save directory structure to allow for multiple Steam users to have separate save files on the same computer. THREE NEW LEVELS! Hot Dog Reporter is officially Steam Deck verified! Updated engine to Godot 4.2 RC6! Is using a beta engine a good idea for a Steam release? Probably not but it fixed a lot of problems and got us Steam Deck verified! Lots of performance optimizations and bug fixes under the hood, but the most noticeable for some of you will be… Fixed swapping between the d-pad and analog stick being extremely buggy! Controls now default to having both enabled. Updated tutorial with new mechanics Added moving hazards (sawblades go brrrr) Added updrafts (fly with the umbrella) Added breakable objects (run into them fast enough to break) Implemented rotating platforms (not yet used anywhere) Gravity reduced by half while sliding! This was intended to make sliding over two tile gaps more consistent, but as a bonus, it means that sliding and jumping on the same frame give you extra height You can pet the cat now More background art Added 2 hidden achievements Fixed a bug where player velocity would carry over from death to respawn Improved backflip timing (should trigger much more consistently along with the skid audio cue now) Added HALLOWEEN FOREVER mode, in case you missed out on the Halloween update or owe allegiance to the Pumpkin King Fixed Steam Cloud cross platform save compatibility Lamps and torches now flicker Fixed and embarrassingly long standing issue with the start menu not reloading when it was supposed to (after deleting save data, unlocking all levels, etc) Fixed f...Read full article on Community Announcements (Exquisite Trash Club)AnnouncementsOfficial
Is Hot Dog Reporter the best game you suck at? It CAN be with YOUR help!
Hello friends! It's Steam Award season and I would be SO HAPPY if you considered Hot Dog Reporter for the Best Game You Suck At award! Is it the best game you suck at? Probably not! Is it the best game you suck at released in 2023? Possibly! Do we have ANY chance of winning? Practically zero! BUT, follow me here, nominations will put more eyeballs on Hot Dog Reporter. More eyeballs means more leaderboard competition. More leaderboard competition means a higher difficulty level. Therefore, the very act of nominating Hot Dog Reporter for the Best Game You Suck at award increases its validity in the category, thus making you, dear nomineer, an ARBITER OF TRUTH. Thank you for your time. I hope you will join us in TRUTH TELLING!Read full article on Community Announcements (Exquisite Trash Club)Patch NotesOfficial
0.6.9.666: Surprise Halloween update!
HELLOOooOOOoo FRIENDS! Ghost implementation got finished early and Halloween felt like a pretty good time to release it! Please enjoy this very slightly rushed (pleasedon’tbebroken) update! Added speedrun ghosts! Run alongside a ghost of your best time in each level! Added an option to disable ghosts …also added a couple of surprises if you play on HalloweenRead full article on Community Announcements (Exquisite Trash Club)
