My Thoughts on A Hat in Time

*Insert quippy one-liner here*

So Gears for Breakfast held a livestream yesterday after the Indies Highlights (which I covered here) which completely caught me off guard if I’m being completely honest with you. Gears for Breakfast announced that A Hat in Time would be coming soon to Switch..

So, it’s coming to Switch?

When I first heard that A Hat in Time was coming to Switch I got very excited, but quite skeptical, asking for proof and more proof, because I a few months give or take, Gears for Breakfast kind of deconfirmed the game but obviously they could’ve been doing that just to lower people’s expectations because they were working on it. Same happened with Fortnite and even Diablo 3. Anyway, rambles aside, I was pretty darn excited. We don’t really know much about when it’s coming or anything for that matter except the verbal reveal we got and that splash screen. I just know for sure that this game will sell gangbusters on the Switch.

A Hat in Time is an video game devolved by the independent developer, Gears for Breakfast. Back in 2015 or 2016 a Kickstarter campaign started and the goal was to make a 3D platformer inspired by Mario Sunshine, Banjo Kazooie, etc. but in its own unique way. It released for PC in October which was incidentally the same month that Super Mario Odyssey came out, which did hurt its sales a bit. Unlike other Kickstarter games such as Mighty No. 9 and Yooka Laylee, A Hat In Time came out to critical success.

What narrative does the game follow?

In this game we follow the story of Hat Kid, a young girl who lives in her own big spaceship which has everything she could ask for. This ship is powered by these little Time Pieces. Suddenly, a Mafia man is floating in space and punches the window which sucks not only Hat Kid but also all the time pieces which shot down all over the earth alongside Hat Kid. She wakes up lifting his face out of the dirt to see she has landed in Mafia Town where she meets another kid called Moustache Girl which will only help you find the time pieces if Hat Kid helps defeat the Mafia boss. But unfortunately Moustache Girl realises the time travelling abilities of the collectibles and since Hat Kid disapproved of her idea of manipulating the time travelling to go on adventures, Moustache Girl is enraged and goes off by herself to find them herself and abuse the powers.

Hat Kid explores place to place to find all the time pieces and while she is on her venture, she meets many weird and whacky creatures in weird and whacky places such as filming a movie and exploring a forest. She encounters Moustache Girl multiple times throughout the game. She has to find her Time Pieces and power her ship!

What is the Gameplay like?

As mentioned before, A Hat In Time is a 3D adventure collectathon platformer inspired by the N64 classics of yesteryear which seems to have died. I also said before that this game was its own unique thing, and indeed it is. There are some gameplay mechanics which aren’t present in the base games which inspired A Hat in Time.

The game is split up into 4 ‘chapters’ which you will progress through. Chapter One is set in Mafia Town and is very reminiscent of Super Mario Sunshine. Your goal is to defeat the Mafia and since it’s the first world, you can freely mess around but also learn how to play the game. The second chapter is called “Battle of the Birds” and is set in a movie studio where two companies are fighting and trying to make a better movie than each other and that is a very platforming specific and narrative driven chapter and so on and so forth. Each chapter has a different mechanic. Some are narrative driven, others are about tight platforming, it’s varied and that’s really good in this type of game.. it is definitely a unique game, a Hat In Time. The gameplay of A Hat In Time is great, it’s a true 3D platformer and unlike Yooka Laylee, Gears for Breakfast made a great innovative game.. but what game mechanics are unique to this game?

Well, firstly you have Hat Kid’s dash jump which equals a lot of distance and fun. You can reach far with.. not only that, but it’s also very fun to pull off and like Mario’s Cappy jump combo is fun to just walk around with, if you catch my drift. I feel like A Hat In Time is more about having fun platforming and playing and experiencing it all, over the platforming. Then again there are sections of the game that need that jump for hard platforming. One of these is a blocky Level section which usually consist of empty voids below. It reminds me of Super Mario Galaxy and the sections are just great!

The second major thing is the Hat function. Yes, a game which is called A Hat In Time NEEDS hats to be a feature.. and they certainly made it a worthwhile one. Each hats have specific abilities, not only that, they also are aesthetically cool. Some abilities include one which turns you into a sculpture which flings over a long distance, or a time stopping hat; a lot of cool abilities are in these. Oh ok so you get a bunch of abilities throughout the game but you can’t help but feel like you haven’t earned it.. well, actually you do! You see, you have to collect yarn and other materials to craft these hats which adds not only exploration but also balances these abilities. It’s a great idea as you’ll want to explore every section of every area which is what you tend to want players to do in your game. Usually if you do that, you collect a star which is practically useless, but the yarn gives you cool abilities and it warrants the search.

Will there be exclusive Switch content?

Short answer; yes.

But what could be the selling point, the exclusive stuff? Well, I doubt it’ll be anything big to be honest. Firstly, this is a Switch port and Nintendo’s consoles have their unique features which third parties and indies can take advantage of to make it unique. It’s definitely going to have HD Rumble without a shadow of a doubt.. it’s the feature every developer under the sun uses for Switch ports, and I feel like it would be really cool to feel a vibration while doing the dash jump to make it that little bit more satisfying. As for motion controls and IR Sensors, I’m not sure how they could unless they make activating the Hat abilities, a waggle motion.. or something else, I don’t know. Same with touch controls, there is nothing that pops out to me. Secondly, I think they will add all the DLCs that they just announced, such as co-op and that other chapter, will come packed in with the base game for free.

If there are any physical exclusive content in the game, I feel like a Cappy hat and Cappy ability would be a reasonable feature.. at the same time I don’t know if Nintendo would do that but it’s the most reasonable option. It wouldn’t be integral to the game, instead just a mess around feature. There have been mods on it countless people have made and it looks cool. I highly doubt anything else than the free DLC added on and the Switch’s tech will be added to A Hat In Time..

When is it coming?

That’s a great question. I don’t have an answer but I have an inkling that it’ll be sooner than we think. If we are to believe there will be a Direct in September, I feel like we’ll get all of the details about this game. It’s big enough to be spotlighted there. We will get some gameplay and then the exclusive stuff will be shown off. At the end we’ll get a date; my prediction is either November 22nd 2018 or January 10th 2019.

Conclusion

I am very excited overall. A Hat in Time is a great game indeed, I am very happy it will be releasing on the Nintendo Switch as I’ve always wanted to play it but I couldn’t get it since I didn’t have the consoles or a powerful enough computer, so that’ll be good for me. It looks fantastic and I can’t say enough how much I love it because of the charm. I look forward to playing it on my Switch some time soon!

Anyway, that’s it for today! I really hope you enjoyed this blog. What are your thoughts on A Hat In Time making its way on to Switch? Will you be picking it up? Comment below! I will see you later. Goodbye :wave: