Hokkaido is a level from IO Interactive's Hitman video game franchise. It takes place in the fictional GAMA Private Hospital in a remote location of Hokkaido, Japan.
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Development
Hokkaido was created by lead level designer Torbjørn Christensen. Christensen and lead game designer Jesper Hylling describe it as an absurd location due to how remote and inconvenient it is for people to get to it, but Christensen regarded that as a strength, owing to its "fantastical" nature that allows them to take more liberties than if it was set in Tokyo. The developers had been looking for an opportunity to include a hospital in the Hitman series for a while, brainstorming on what could go wrong in a hospital setting. Initially, the setting was just going to be a hospital, but the team elected to add the resort and morgue in order to make it more surprising for players. They also sought to make the different parts of the level feel visually and thematically distinct. They went to lengths to ensure that the different areas felt like they made sense to be connected to one another, justifying the presence of a resort being that a rich patient would want to recuperate or the staff room having a dance mat game because it's set in Japan. When describing the level archetype Hokkaido fits into, Christensen called it a spiral, due to how they wrap around and interconnect with stairs and slopes.