A Hat in Time ★★★☆☆

I was a lot more charmed by this than I expected to be, both with its tone and with how good the game felt to play. The storytelling is something that, if described to me second-hand, I think I would assume to be twee and annoying, but its humour, though rarely made me laugh out loud, consistently put me in a good mood and the expressive, detailed movement afforded to the player made each world a delight to explore.

Structurally the game is a bit weird. At the start it seems in the vein of Super Mario 64, with the first world introducing the plot and main antagonist of the game through a series of levels that all use the same basic layout but with an evolving environment for each level — this one is at night time, this one has a lava flood, this one you have to get into the locked subarea. But after that the main villain disappears until the finale and of the four worlds you visit only the first and third really keep the idea of revisiting the same area with changes for every level (and at that the third one heavily fences off different areas to keep the levels on track). The second world mostly uses bespoke maps for each level with little overlap and the fourth one introduces itself as “freeroam” but really consists of a set of distinct, linear climbs that can be done in any order. It feels like the game has ambitions of being more open and freeform but often relies on very linear setpieces. This isn’t bad by any means—most of the setpieces are very fun!—but the game feels at odds with itself because of it.

There are more collectibles and bonus challenges to find by backtracking, but I never found much interest in doing so and the game seems to want to push for forward momentum constantly, showing you the newest area you’ve unlocked every time you return to the hub rather than encouraging you to fully explore whatever world you were already on. I was very surprised at one point when I tried to play a level in the second world and was told it required an item that I hadn’t unlocked yet and then only received after exploring a few levels into the third world. This is another way in which the game feels to be pulling in two directions at once.

But despite the structural oddities, moment to moment the game is largely great fun and while I have no desire to try and unlock and explore everything it has to offer, I had a lovely time going through the main levels.