A Hat in Time Review - A passionate platformer

How (d) would it be useful if you could put on a cap that you can suddenly run super fast? In the world of A Hat in Time, this is reality. In our A Hat in Time review you can read exactly whether this game knows how to use its main tools or whether we hang this platformer on the coat rack again.

After having been absent for some time, the 3D-platformer genre is back in 2017. Of course we could finally get started with Super Mario Odyssey on the Nintendo Switch. Earlier this year, Yooka Laylee also appeared and took us back to the platformers of yesteryear. To finish the year we can also get started with A Hat in Time, which can now be played on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Magic hats

In this game you play as Hat Girl, an alien lady who has a special collection of hats. Her hats give her special powers that you need to finish the game. So you have a winter hat with which you can change into a block of ice and put a punch on the ground. There are six different hats that you can collect.

It gets even more magical by putting patches on your hat. There is room for three upgrades, so you have to choose which forces you need at any time. Very handy is the grappling upgrade that allows you to discover many new areas. If you want to make it difficult for yourself, you can also pin a patch that will kill you in one go.

Baking to personality

Despite the few words that Hat Girl brings out, she manages to charm anyway. Like other characters Hat Girl has a lot of spice and she knows how to give a funny twist to the different situations. A lot of humor is extra good by the voice actors who have done their best. Almost every character has a voice and again a barge more personality than when they are simple sounds.

You can customize the appearance of Hat Girl to your own taste by unlocking other colors for her outfits. There are different versions of all hats, but you can also change the clothes and hair color of Hat Girl. Freeing these colors is done by collecting collectors items, after which you can pick out something new on a slot machine.

Looking for hourglasses

After your space ship crashes, you lose a lot of hourglasses that power your ship. You then have to scour four nearby worlds to find your hourglasses. The worlds are incredibly varied and it is therefore nice to be able to discover a new location again. Every world looks extra colorful and animated, making it a visual pleasure to continue the worlds.

You look through a telescope to a world and then choose a level with an hourglass as a reward. All levels play in the same open world, so it is a strange choice that you have to manually select a new level to find another hourglass. It would have been easier to just walk around in a world to find hourglasses, like Super Mario Odyssey and Yooka Laylee do. The last world does use this format. Developer Gears for Breakfast knows that this design really exists.

Tasty controls with a dubious camera

Very important for a platformer is that the control works fine. A Hat in Time is armed with the classic double jump and completes that arsenal with a very nice dive-movement. This allows you to dive far forward to bridge abysses and quickly make a world come. In combination with the grappling hook, you can jump and swing through the game without too many problems.

Where sometimes a stitch remains, is the camera. Especially in areas with a ceiling problems arise, because as soon as you get too high the camera shines in all directions. There is also some difficulty with looking up, making it difficult to estimate where you can go or where you can hang with the grappling hook. At most moments you will not be bothered by this, but it is often enough to make a comment.

In general there are some aspects to criticize A Hat in Time, but that does not mean that it is really fun to play. It will not be as good as Mario Odyssey, but that is also a game of millions of euros that has been in development for years. A Hat in Time is a Kickstarter project that is made out of love for the platform genre.

A Hat in Time Review - Made with love

That love radiates from it. The smooth gameplay and the highly creative levels are actually a good reason to try A Hat in Time. Yes, sometimes the camera does strange things and the story does not make sense, but then you play a nice platformer with unique characters and levels. For 28.49 euros you can give A Hat in Time a chance and that is worth it for us.

➕ Super lots of personality
➕ Adjust main character
➕ Unique and colorful worlds
➕ Smooth steering
➖ Selecting levels in an open world?
➖ Camera has some problems

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