Best Of

A Hat In Time

A Hat In Time is a 3D platformer collect-a-thon game in the vain of Super Mario series, Banjo & Kazooie series, etc, and justly marketed as "cute-as-heck".
You play as "Hat Kid" a time/space traveling little girl on her way back home. Her dimension traveling ship is powered by special time manipulating hourglasses called "Time Pieces".
Her ship arrives at a planet, and due to a very thorough member of the Mafia of Cooks, her ship's supply of Time Pieces gets scattered all across the planet.
She must now explore 5 areas of the planet, plus some time rifts in order to get back her fuel and continue her trip back home.

The games' marketing got me interested in the first place, so I'll let it do the visual work for this review.

No real need to fluff it up. This game is cute, silly, fun, and accomplishes what it set out to be.
Notes:
The controls feel great, and are easy to learn.
There is enough variety in aesthetics, mechanics, and objectives to keep things fresh as a whole throughout the ~15 or so hour adventure across the world.
Different abilities based on one of 6 hats you can wear.
Many badges that alter abilities or gameplay mechanics.
Some badges and other setting are designed with speedrunners in mind.
The camera badge gives you full control of the screen and some other features while it pauses the game. Hand-tailored screenshots.
2 player splitscreen available.

Generally, each area of the world and sometimes different levels within the areas, will have a specific aesthetic theme.
These are made to fit either the setting itself, or to help accentuate the gameplay for that particular level.
Examples: a sepia toned murder mystery on a train, an ethereal dimension hopping romp through ancient ruins, a cheery parade around a city.
3D platforming is generally the name of the game, but some levels will add, alter, or outright throw out the platforming.

Example: On the aforementioned parade level you gotta keep moving across the rooftops lest the troupe of musicians you're leading bumps into you. All the while meeting different objectives to help spice up the show.

There are stashes of items hidden throughout the levels. These usually give you coins that you can use to unlock various goodies.
These goodies include remixed level music that you can swap out, different skins for your hats, and different color schemes for Hat Kid herself.
This game is #HATS, but more for DigiKid rather then BobbyDigi I think.

There are bonus stages called Time Rifts throughout Hat Kid's ship and the various levels.
These are akin to the bonus stages in Mario Sunshine. A core set of these follow their own aesthetic.
There will be one story rift for each area of the world. The aesthetics and challenges will usually be derived from the area they are in. With some story elements for that area hidden within the rift.
Completing one of these rifts also gives you a free roll at those goodies.

There is great replay value potential for this game on the PC. At the moment Steam workshop support is in open beta.
Users can create new time rift challenges, new hat skins, and even more, and keep adding to the game.

In the time I played it, which was on and shortly after release, there were some notable bugs, but I didn't experience anything game breaking.
In fact I miss a bug that caused Hat Kid to roll in place when hopping on the scooter without using any other input first after spawning into an area.

In summary, A Hat In Time is a relatively modern take on the classic collect-a-thon games of the early polygon era.
Diverse gameplay, aesthetics, and characters help keep your playthrough fresh.
It supports modern trends such as modding, speedrunning, and social media sharing.
Whether you've got a pair of rose-tinted glasses for 3D platformers stashed away somewhere, or like platformers in general you'll likely enjoy this game.