By: Persephone Pond

‘A Hat in Time’ is a 3D platformer game released in 2017 and developed by an indie studio called Gears for Breakfast, and published by Humble Bumble. In this game, the player plays as a young girl called Hat Kid, who loses her fuel for her spaceship and needs to collect all the pieces to get home.

There are 4 different areas of the planet that these fuel pieces land on. Each area consists of 4-7 different levels plus a boss fight; each level gaining a lost piece of fuel until the player eventually collects all 40 missing pieces and are able to get back home.

The first area is a large town built around a volcano called Mafia Town. The enemies in this area are caricatures of stereotypical Italian mafia members, and while fighting through each level, the player gains more information about their backstory and how Mafia Town came to be.

The second area is a movie studio, where the player meets 2 rival directors fighting for an annual movie award. The first director, The Conductor, is a Scottish murder mystery director with a tendency to direct all his movies on trains. The second director is a disco themed penguin who strives for fame and only fame. Both characters recruit the player to act in their movies, so the levels in this area are more story driven.

The third area is the Subcon Forest, where the player is introduced to an evil spirit who is known by the name The Snatcher. When he steals the player’s soul, he offers contracts to do his dirty work around the forest for the soul to be returned. The forest is spooky and there are a few horror-esque levels in this area.

The final area is the Alpine Skyline. This is a beautiful landscape inhabited by giant goat creatures, who are cared for by smaller, humanoid goat creatures. The player must retrieve pieces of fuel from different areas that all require different skills, and through these levels the player is introduced to the dark lore of the land.

All of the levels in this game are creative and very well thought out, and the level of detail in each individual character’s story is wonderfully fleshed out. The author of this article fully recommends the game and on a scale of 10 stars, easily rates it a 10.

‘A Hat in Time’ is available on consoles such as Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Playstation 4, and Microsoft Windows. In addition to the vanilla game, there are 2 DLCs available on all the same platforms. These DLCs add 14 total more fuel pieces to collect, and add a higher difficulty to the game if desired, and add 2 new areas to the planet with wonderful stories and characters.