Release Date: December 5, 2017 (PS4)
Platform(s): PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Mac
Developer: Gears for Breakfast
Price: $29.99

In A Hat In Time players play as Hat Girl, a top hat wearing child captaining her own ship from world to world on her own. As the game starts, you encounter a bald mafia man knocking on the outside of your windshield and demanding you pay a toll for occupying his planet’s airspace. When you refuse, he smashes the window, sending you, along with 40 hourglasses that power your ship, falling towards the planet. To make it back home, she must venture down to the surface and collect all the time she lost. Naturally, the only way to survive the planet's strange locales is to utilize a bottomless collection of flashy headwear.

Stages come in the form of different planets, floating across the universe, waiting to be unlocked with timepieces. Hat Girl’s spaceship is filled with cuddly toys, pillows, and even a Roomba. Jumping on the latter unlocks a trophy, highlighting one of the many excellent touches A Hat in Time hides across its charming world. The hub area is filled with nifty secrets, many of which are discovered naturally once you unlock new hats.

Along with collecting the hourglasses needed to power your ship, you can also collect balls of yarn. These balls of yarn are used to craft different types of hats that can be used in many ways. You’ll only craft a small range of hats throughout A Hat in Time, but the number of ways they can be used are vast. Whether it’s a hat that gives you the ability to sprint or see into the nether realm, platforming and puzzles are engineered to make you think both fast and outside the box. Gaining different abilities using these hats made me want to go back to previous levels to explore for more hidden goodies.

Visually, A Hat in Time looks wonderful and the controls are smooth, for the most part. However, my one main gripe is that the camera can be unpredictable from time to time, making some platforming elements difficult and frustrating. The main levels are fairly easy to get around and enemies are easy to defeat. The boss battles are a lot of fun and each one is different. While they are not difficult, each boss battle takes some thinking to figure out the best way to defeat the boss. Again, each hat you craft can help you defeat these bosses in different ways.

Overall, A Hat in Time gives off a Super Mario 64 vibe and is a very fun platformer collect-a-thon. There is a lot to explore and collect, levels are a decent difficulty and each boss scene is fun and unique. I found myself using the different hats I crafted to explore as much as possible and reach areas that I thought weren’t possible before obtaining certain hats.

Pros

Lots of collectibles to find with many ways to explore the world.
Visually fantastic
Boss battles are fun and unique

Cons

Camera can be very unpredictable

Thank you to Gears for Breakfast for providing a review code. This review was done on the PS4 version of the game.

A Hat in Time Review