A Hat in Time Death Wish - Wishing for Peace and Tranquility

[Crow]

"I appear to have gotten myself lost."

~raocow, every episode of hat time thus far

[SAJewers]

https://www.twitch.tv/pinkkittyrose/cli ... uperVinlin

For anyone who wants to see it cheated

[Grounder]

more like mafia clown

[AmeijinMayo]

Now you'll be sleeping with the goldfish crackers

[HatKid]

The race in the final game is still much better than what was in the Alpha Build - the balloon race. You rode a firework that was awkward as heck to control and had to fly through rings all around Mafia Town to get speed boosts to beat the Mafia in a hot air balloon. I still had my old laptop at the time which could not handle Mafia Town all that well and made it a very frustrating experience.

[Dragooner]

You rode a firework that was awkward as heck to control and had to fly through rings all around Mafia Town to get speed boosts to beat the Mafia in a hot air balloon.

That sounds amazing. Is there still a workshop level of it?

[HatKid]

You rode a firework that was awkward as heck to control and had to fly through rings all around Mafia Town to get speed boosts to beat the Mafia in a hot air balloon.

That sounds amazing. Is there still a workshop level of it?

Not that I know of, no. There is a video of it here though if anyone's interested.
Huh, I totally forgot about the mail delivery act in Subcon Forest. I remember when I did it I missed one person somewhere so I had to go find whoever it was I missed. Didn't take too long thankfully.
edit: Apparently there are more than enough people to deliver mail to, oops. It's been a while lol

[Grounder]

Yeah, all of this would probably almost double the LP length unless I'm vastly overestimating things?

[Razzling]

Wow, it's been a hot minute since I posted on here. What better way to start that up again but with an overly long post about pointless things in video games!

And this episode brings up something about hat in time that always bothered me in the most minor of ways, and that's a sort of lack of consistency with the world-state and how it works. Like Snatcher saying "Were you waiting for me to turn blue?" Implying a constant worldstate of "bosses turn blue when they're vulnerable to attack." Except if we go chronologically, we have 3 bosses we fought before snatcher, the Mafia Boss, the Dead Bird Directors, and Toilet.

Mafia Boss turns blue when he's vulnerable, nothing suspect there so far. Getting to the Directors though and they never turn blue, ever, they're just always vulnerable to attack. The toilet turns blue yes, but that blue-weakness thing gets circumvented by the Cherry Bombs, meaning for half the fight you ignore the "Blue means vulnerable" rule.

So 1.5 out of 3 bosses before Snatcher follow the "Bosses turn blue when vulnerable" rule, not exactly as important of a world-state that you'd expect it of Snatcher, honestly my first fight through with him, I was more waiting for him to just leave the "this ouchies and hurts you when you touch it" liquid, rather than a colour change.

This happens more universally than just with the bosses I've noticed, even with things added by the Nyakuza metro DLC, with stickers (which give you the funny emotes like Cat Crime and are used for Online Party) only having the regular common ones in the Metro itself, though the stickers would have fit fine in any of the other worlds, giving plenty of new collectibles to reward explorers as some people point out, the stuff we do get is kinda lax (once you make all the hats the yarns end up being pointless). Theres a few others I wont make this too long with (Hat Flairs being bought at shopkeeps instead of on the slot machine, badges being bought from someone other than the twitchy merchant, etc).

This ended up way longer than I thought it would be, and honestly I love this game I 100%-ed it twice, once before and once after the DLC(s) came out. It's just funny to notice these things, because it would be nice with how each world explores different gameplay types and ideas that these Universal Rules always stay the same (Bosses turn blue when vulnerable, Twitchy Merchant is in every world and sells badges, you find rift tokens to get hat flairs, etc.) it's not like it's a game ruiner or anything, I just like overthinking about video games :>

[Ledgem]

Oh boy the THING has appeared.

And yeah in hindsight after playing this game a second time recently and watching the LP the game really is rather disjointed. I kinda like it anyway? I also had the fortune of fighting snatcher as my second boss, discounting the toilette, so the turn blue thing was fresh in my mind from the mafia. It would have worked better if turning blue were more of a mechanic tho.

Also I fully agree with raocow about the quake effect.

It's what made REDACTED so gods damn frustrating that I just used CE to get it done for the rewards.

The contracts are a real love/hate thing but mostly hate because so many of them are just kind of awful to me, but a handful are really fun? The snatcher coins should be on by default too tho and not require this, but that's in the same vein as hookshot not being a badge. But we can get into ADVANCED CONTRACTS later when we actually try them.

[Sturg]

Mashing jump when you get stunned makes it much easier to recover. That attack is made so that you have enough time to get out of the 1st wave of rings if you get stunned that first time.

You'll learn a lot more on how to deal with his attacks, if you go through the death wish stuff, that is.

Oh boy, Death Wish. That is definitely a thing. I managed to super clear it all, but MAN it took a good amount of hours.

[kurt91]

I've been waiting to post this one...




Oh yeah, and that "feel the usual amount of empty" line that you said felt out of place. Makes perfect sense when you think about it. Not only has just about every single person she's met tried to double-cross her and kill her when they were done with her, but her absolute only friend that she had made in that world hates her and robbed her when they disagreed. Hat Kid's got it pretty tough.

[Arctangent]

I've been waiting to post this one...

holy shit

[Blivsey]

The joke is that when she lost her soul the first time, it said "you feel strangely empty inside" or something along those lines

Also re: the arrow attack... golly I miss Superstar Saga

[kitikami]

The game's incongruities have certainly been noticeable, but i've just chalked it up to a small indie developer not having the time and budget to make sure everything stays consistent as the game drops you into wildly different settings with different gameplay conceits. It's understandable (and even admirable) that they chose where to allocate their resources, finished their game, and put out something that did what they wanted without having to spend forever reworking every little detail to be perfect. It feels like an indie game in both its flaws and its charms.

That said, the Snatcher begging to never see Hatricia again and then 30 seconds later he has literally moved into her bedroom of his own accord was quite jarring.

[kurt91]

I've been waiting to post this one...

holy shit

Even better, the top comment on the YouTube page is the guy who wrote the music for the game, and while he's a bit more eloquent about it, he had the same general reaction.

[helucard]

So rao made an interesting observation today regarding how cool a setpiece the Massive Shattered Hourglass is in the forest. This place was GOING PLACES in the beta, like, they had a somewhat different role for snatcher, he didn't even have a 3D model, he was just a shadow on the wall at the time that followed you around and was a general Team Rocket-esque pest. The queen's manor had another floor in which Snatcher would create a shadow clone of you to snag a key and run off. Pretty solid idea honestly.

From what I remember, it seemed like it was shaping up to be a 3-directional fight for the forest between the queen, snatcher, and an unfortunately unused character named "Moon Jumper". He was originally within the logo for the subcon forest (which interestingly was world 2, not 3) https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/a-h ... 0415174509

But yeah, it really does feel like a lot of content was cut from the forest; it has an eerie empty vibe to it, which honestly HELPS the spooky atmosphere in a strange way. Sure, there's a tragic story here of how a forest went from happy storybook town to grim nightmare woods. You're not the reader though, you're a character, and you're just too far into the book to see what had to unfold to bring things to this point. I like it; while it's a shame there is missing stuff, this is still contributing to AN experience.

Still though... to borrow half a quote from the end of that video: "This game, which seems pretty beefy..." could've been even beefier.

[FourteenthOrder]

unrelated but can i just say how amazing your avatar looks with this hat


~~

Anyway, I personally think cutting the content was the right choice. Based on beta videos of the third floor, it was just a sudden change in structure (like, Vanessa didn't appear until the very end, there was a darkness gimmick with lights with countdowns, etc.), and the puzzles didn't look that fun as a whole.

And more characters isn't always inherently a more compelling story, which is why Moon Jumper and the Snatcher's roles were merged at some point. Subcon Forest as a whole is more focused with Snatcher and his contracts as the center point everything revolves around than it would have been with the three separate parties.

[Grounder]

"Life sucks and then you die!" - Vince McMahon

[AmeijinMayo]

A statue beyond us! raocow will find the way, probably!

[HatKid]

Relevant song (alternate version with lyrics)
Though when the lyricless version plays isn't relevant to Subcon Forest, which was in the Bookstore level in the Alpha Build which was cut from the final game due to story changes. The singing isn't used in any publicly released version but it is in the files of the Alpha Build. Why it's called The Subcon Forest (Masked)? I have no idea.
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It's a shame that the game keeps crashing for raocow, I never had it crash on me except for when I was messing with mods or trying to load Workshop levels. I wasn't a huge fan of those statues either.

[PSI Ninja]

The statues move pretty fast too.

The game also crashed for me in a purple Time Rift, towards the end of

Deep Sea

. It was during an all pages run too. Very irritating, that was a tough one.

[warpio]

I like how the pink time rift is floating in some place that seems to be literally frozen in time. Like you really get the sense that these time rifts have a some kind of glitchy effect on the world more than ever here. I wonder why that wasn't a thing with the other time rift locations (or maybe it was, but it was just too subtle the other times for me to notice?)

The way I dealt with those statues was I made frequent use of the Camera badge, which pauses the game and lets me look around in peace while the statue is on my ass. Then when I figure out where to go I'll unpause and get the hell out of there. I don't know if that strat was the intention but it sure makes it a lot less annoying.

I've been waiting to post this one...

Damn I haven't heard this one yet. Kino as hell.

[FourteenthOrder]

When I did the button puzzle I hadn't yet collected any time stop yarn and didn't know that was a possibility, so I did it with the sprint hat and lots of tries routing things. This way looks way easier.

[Reecer7]

raocow has nearly endless permutations available for episode titles here and it's really unfair

heheheh milli like the windmill