A Hat in Time

Are 3D N64-style platformers then new 2D SNES-style platformers? Quite possibly. Joining the likes of Yooka-Laylee (as well as various remasters of actual older 3D platformers like Spro and Crash Bandicoot) is A Hat in Time, the product of a Kickstarter for the sort of people who lament (it is starting to appear mistakenly) the lack of 3D platformers. People want them, and indie studios are serving them up and doing a great job of it.

In any case, A Hat in Time is a platformer so cute it may well give you a sugar rush. It follows a tiny girl who travels through space in a giant hat. When she/you accidentally spills hourglasses over a planet she's passing by, she has to land and start collecting them.

Following in the footsteps of titles like Super Mario World, this is a game packed to the gills with weird and wonderful ideas. You'll fight a toilet, you'll gather hats and badges that give you special abilities, you'll come up against the Mafia of Cooks, you'll solve a murder on a train, you'll be roped into signing deadly contracts by a demon in a haunted forest.

For all its whimsy, however, A Hat in Time is a game that properly grounds you in its world. The team has made sure that you'll feel like a proper part of your environment and notice the tug of gravity as you jump about it.

Welcome to the age of imaginative indie 3D platformers. Delights await.