After 4 years in development, the cute as
heck 3D platformer A Hat in Time has finally graced us with its presence, and I truly mean
that! It’s a delightful journey from start to
finish and every single chapter is unique and full of charisma. There is so much to unpack about its game
design, but what has stood out to me most now that I’ve played it for myself is how
it has successfully bridged the gap from being a spiritual successor of the collectathon
genre, to a truly original IP. Let’s talk about it. I had the pleasure of chatting with A Hat
in Time’s creator and director, Jonas Kærlev, about its development process and how it
became the final product it is today. His dev team, Gears for Breakfast, faced a
lot of challenges along the way, but it seemed like their vision was clear from the start. (Some games, when they make a spiritual successor,
they're like alright, we'll follow the thing we like. The pros and cons and the atmosphere and the
feeling of everything, we want that perfectly encaptured into our game. We didn't really want that, we wanted the
game to kind of like be able to stand on its own. We realized that the games we're inspired
by, they're not flawless, and trying to pretend they aren't flawless is a mistake.) A Hat in Time obviously has a lot of inspirations,
but the key was taking those influences and expanding on them to give us something fresh. In our discussion, it was apparent that 3
main areas were considered in how to push A Hat in Time over the edge from homage into
standalone classic: versatile movement, improved camera, and a buttload of charm. Let’s start with the movement. Kærlev stated that this is where it all began
- they wanted to make sure Hat Kid felt good to move around the various levels before starting
anything else, which makes sense, movement is the bread and butter of a platformer after
all. But all of the various abilities at the player’s
disposal appear to be based around a singular design principle: (If you have no double jump,
you jump and you miss, then oh, you're dead, right? There's no way to recover from that. But I feel like if the player recognizes they
made a mistake, then they should be able to salvage that mistake. Which is what the double jump is there to
do. It's not just to reach higher places, it's
to make sure they can salvage their mistake.) A Hat in Time’s movement is about more than
just what feels good, it’s goal is to give the player as many options as possible for
fixing mistakes and chaining moves together to traverse stages (A lot of our moves can
connect into each other, like you can do a double jump, dive, dive cancel, to a hat ability
for instance. A lot of people might think that our moveset
is very small, but I think that we designed that on purpose, because we wanted to focus
on just a few moves and how much those moves can connect and intertwine with eachother
to create interesting movesets). And there certainly is a lot more under the
hood in A Hat in Time than originally meets the eye. While a double jump, dive and wall climb might
seem relatively basic, you can get a third jump by canceling out of a dive, and this
is actually taught in one of the missions, the devs want the player to have as many choices
for mobility as they can. Furthermore, there’s complex secret mechanics
that, while not explicitly told to the player, could be found by a more attentive audience. If you hit jump just as Hat Kid touches the
ground from a dive, she’ll quickly bounce back up with an insane speed boost. You can also recover from a large fall by
pressing the same button as you land, similar to teching in Super Smash Bros. Not only could this lead to completing a level
extremely fast when combined with the Sprint cap, it further demonstrates the team’s
focus on what feels satisfying, not just in movement, but in opportunity. If everything flows well from a motion standpoint,
it allows the rest of the game to shine through. Similarly, the camera has always been the
crux of the 3D Platformer genre, either making or breaking some people’s experience. And while a certain amount of bad camera placement
can be assumed from these types of games, Kærlev feels differently: (Some people say
"oh this game has bad camera, oh but that's expected because it's inspired by old games". Like, that's such a cop-out, just make a proper
camera, gosh-darnit! Just do it right!) A huge part of setting A Hat In Time apart
from its contemporaries is not settling for what people might expect out of a game like
this. Without a doubt, some camera issues are unavoidable,
it’s a natural product of platforming in 3D space, but Gears for Breakfast spent a
lot of time developing an extremely complex camera to make sure it was as little of a
nuisance as possible. (What we actually do is we make some predictions,
right? Like the player might move over here, and
we're like alright, where is the camera going to be? Let's feed that into the algorithm, where's
the camera going to be then? Alright let's slowly make some like, middle
ground between where the player is now and where the player's going to be, and then that's
our new camera position. So the camera is constantly trying to like
predict where you're trying to go, which is like, an insane thing to do for just a tiny
little detail with the camera). On top of this, the team worked tirelessly
to add effects like Silhouette, Passthrough, Camera Whiskers, and Geometry Dithering to
give it that extra polish that helps it stand tall among other platforming giants. Not only do these changes make the gameplay
seamless, but it can help the audience to have an easier time watching a let’s play
or stream of the game, which was important to the dev team as well. While it was a headache to develop, Kærlev
thinks it was worthwhile. (I don't blame anyone for just taking the
easy way out, but we really wanted that to be solid because the moment you feel you're
out of control, especially with the camera, that's when you're gonna get hit by a brick
wall, because you lose control of your character which is awful). But finally, what I think is most important
in transforming A Hat in Time from a spiritual successor into its own original behemoth was
the level of charm bursting at its seams. I had the opportunity to test out a demo level
before the game’s release entitled “Murder on the Owl Express”, and it perfectly exemplifies
the care and detail Gears for Breakfast employed. The act begins with a bunch of shady crows
asking you ridiculous personal questions and letting you input your answers, like what
your pet’s childhood pet would be named, your uncle’s sister’s maiden name, or
a body part that you’re self conscious about. Eventually you find a dead body with a knife
in its back, and a cardboard cutout of what’s supposed to be your aunt at the scene of the
crime. The stage quickly turns into a whodunit murder
mystery where you have to find clues about the suspects and stealthily avoid being spotted
by the Crow Agent Watch. Note Hat Kid’s detective finger gun, that’s
very important. As a clock slowly ticks down, you travel from
car to car finding keys, rescuing your pet dog you named earlier, and even overhearing
crows gossip about the body part that you said you were self conscious about - man that
actually cuts real deep. As you find your last clue, you’re asked
to identify who the murderer is between 6 options, including that cardboard cutout of
your aunt, the victim and even yourself. Little do you know, that there’s a big secret
here: (Spoilers for everyone who hasn't played the level yet - every ending is correct. Like, no matter which one you pick it's the
correct answer. And every time someone plays the level for
the first time, they're like "*snaps* I knew it. I knew that was the one. The one I picked, that's the right one." Who you pick doesn't really matter too much,
what matters is you had fun along the way). From a game design perspective, the journey
is more important than the destination in this chapter. The time limit isn’t actually counting down
in real time, but rather triggers when you enter certain rooms, and it doesn’t matter
which suspect you choose, it’ll give you a comical outcome either way. The crazy thing is, every world has a memorable
act like this, and tries to inject as much personality as possible: (Yeah we tried to
make it as fun as possible. That's really what it's about, it's not
just about, ya know, platforming. Ya know, it's not just hardcore, "you have
to jump this and you have to jump over here", it's about having fun, and that's really what
we're all about). Over the course of A Hat in Time, you’ll
go from a seaside town controlled by the mafia, to a parade on the rooftops to a haunted mansion
(and seriously it’s actually really terrifying), and making sure you never tread the same ground
twice was paramount to Kærlev and his team (Every chapter is completely unique, and not
just in visuals, in that how they operate. So, in Mario 64 you complete a star, and the
next star becomes available. And that is true only for our very first world,
but just straight into the 2nd world, we change that up completely. We have our very own little bird-metacritic
that tells you how much your movie got. And how well your movies perform decides who
you get to fight as a boss. Then the next chapter, which is called Subcon
Forest, like again we throw everything you know completely out the window, and now there's
no like, missions. Instead there's contracts. Like, you meet this shady character who's
like "Alright, you work for me now", so you have to complete your contractual obligations). And this thought continues into chapter 4
where it literally becomes an open world adventure with no missions at all, allowing you to just
roam freely and find time-pieces and other goodies as you go. Making everything as cute as possible not
only affected the art direction but mechanics as well, like the various hats you can knit,
just because they thought it would be adorable to have all these little beanies and masks
to wear. All it takes is booting up the game for just
a few minutes to see how apparent this is, and while it took a lot more time to be released
than some had originally hoped, Kærlev knew how important polish was to A Hat in Time’s
development (If we wanted to, we could have like, just shipped the game out in like a
year or two, right? But we didn't, we chose not to do that, we
chose to actually care about the game. And it has been an immense pain, but I think
it's paid off). And I couldn’t agree more - all the little
details is what helps set A Hat in Time apart from its predecessors and its competition. From bouncing on burger cushions, to scaring
mafia men as a swamp monster, to crossing off parts of a contract to become a ghost’s
best friend, it seemed like every step I took in A Hat in Time made me smile, and turned
it into an experience I won’t ever forget. If you’re interested in hearing my full
interview with Jonas Kærlev, you can check it out in the description below. New IP’s are important, I think they help
drive the game industry forward and into new territory we’ve never seen before, and it’s
cool to see how some of them get there in the process. If you’ve played A Hat in Time, what are
some of your favorite parts of the game? Do you think it lives up to its goals? Tell me in the comments below, I’d love
to hear it. Thanks for watching another episode of Good
Game Design. I’ll see you guys next time, stay frosty
my friends! Hey guys, it’s snomaN, I hope you enjoyed
today’s look at A Hat in Time. I wanted to give a huge shoutout to my Patreon
supporters, they gave me input about what questions to ask Jonas about the game and
got to take a look at the interview early. If you ever want to help support the channel
and gain access to all sorts of rewards in the process, consider chipping in at patreon.com/snomangaming.
