A Hat in Time

A Hat in Time is an independent 3D platformer that openly embraces the legacy of games like Super Mario Sunshine and Banjo-Kazooie, aiming to revive the collect-a-thon adventures of the turn of the millennium. The player controls a small girl with a hat whose spaceship has lost its fuel in the form of scattered hourglasses, forcing her to explore the planet below. Each world is a self-contained chapter with its own tone, ranging from a mafia-run port town through a film studio of rival directors to a haunted forest, and individual goals within the same map vary widely enough that repeated returns never grow stale.

Movement is the core, and the game leans heavily on it. The character jumps, performs a roll into a follow-up leap, uses an umbrella both as a weapon and as a way to grapple onto ropes, and collects hats with different abilities, such as summoning an arrow pointing to the next objective, an explosive, or the ability to slow down time. Badges add further passive upgrades, letting the player build their own personal movement style. Chapters are divided into full-fledged levels and shorter tasks, and the game also offers time trials for those who want to fully master the controls.

On Switch the game arrived later than on other platforms, and handheld mode suits it well, since individual missions typically last around ten to twenty minutes. The visuals go for a soft, cartoonish style with bold colours and exaggerated character expressions, while the music leans on playful orchestral and jazz motifs that shift with each chapter. The project came about thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, and critics and players alike praised how it managed to capture the mood of classic platformers without being mere nostalgia. Occasional technical rough edges and an imperfect camera are the main complaints, but overall it's one of the few modern games that truly deliver on this nearly extinct genre.