A Hat in Time

Genre: 3D Platformer

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

A Hat in Time is a family-friendly 3D Platformer where players play as a spacefaring girl whose ship gets accosted by one of the mooks from the island planet of Mafia Town, resulting in the ship spilling out its fuel – magical hourglasses. Yeah, the game doesn’t really explain any of that either. Anyway, you must go through the game’s various levels collecting the various items strewn about, with the ultimate goal of collecting all of the hourglasses to refuel your ship.

This game is absolutely exploding with personality, though it’s a bit aimless and random. Your powers are determined by the hat you wear. Why? Because it looks interesting. The denizens of Mafia Town all look the same and speak with the same silly Russian accent. Why? Because it’s funny. Early on, you come across another young girl who wears a red hood and has a mustache. Why? You know what, you’re not going to get anywhere asking “why”, so you may as well just stop that right now.

Still, as inexplicable as it all may be, it is still consistently amusing and entertaining. The writing here is funny, some of the ideas brought up here are clever, and the game can get away with running on “rule of funny” because it usually manages to hit that mark pretty well.

That’s good, because graphically, this game feels like it’s stuck a few generations in the past. The characters are low-poly, the animations are sub-par, and some of the textures are really atrocious looking. Yet despite this, the game still runs into issues with slowdown, probably due to the fact that the game’s levels are littered with so much junk. Honestly, even without the slowdown I think the game would have fared much better if the locales weren’t so busy so they could have a distinct, memorable look. As it is, it’s hard for me to get a feel for where I am in a level as different parts often look very samey.

The sound fares a bit better here, less due to the music (which is decent, but forgettable cartoony fare), and more due to the delightful voice work that really sells the comedy of the game’s characters, though I will note that the “silent protagonist” thing seems out of place here when everyone is so chatty and often talking to said protagonist.

The platforming in this game is overall good and pretty varied, with the game’s short attention span making for it frequently switching up what you’re doing. However, it’s not without its issues. For one thing, the fact that airborne attacks are done via a context-sensitive command makes them frustratingly unreliable, despite that they’re often necessary to defeat baddies. What’s more, this game’s camera can be pretty terrible at times, actively fighting the player if you want it anywhere but directly behind you, and in some places refusing to get out of a bad position near the ground.

In the end, A Hat in Time has plenty of problems – it’s unpolished, unfocused, graphically ugly, and suffers from a really frustrating camera. However, despite all of this, it’s still quite enjoyable thanks to fun and varied platforming and a great sense of humor. Fans of the genre should definitely give it a look.

tl;dr – A Hat in Time is a family-friendly 3D Platformer about a spacefaring girl whose ship loses its magical hourglass fuel, and she must content with various cartoony characters to get them back. This game is extremely unpolished and unfocused, with poor graphics and a terrible camera. However, the core gameplay is good and the game is consistently funny and original. Fans of Platformers should definitely give this game a look, so long as they can look past its issues.

Grade: B-

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