Strongly worded opinions. My views expressed here are my own and not of any of my employers.

Mobile games never have my niche. They either suck, or are so filled with in-app purchases that you might as well buy the PC version. Hatfall is one of those games that is the exception to this rule, and makes me relive hope in humanity… somewhat.

To those of you who don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, it’s about the game Hatfall. Hatfall is a game made by Zero Punctuations creator Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw. Zero Punctuation is a ‘review’ series. Note the quotation marks, as the term review is to be taken rather loosely. This is because most of the reviews are mostly a case of Accentuating The Negative, where it’s less of a review but instead it’s more like Yahtzee is widdling over the game for the viewers amusement. Wether you like him or not, the series is most certainly interesting.

Catching Hats

The core gameplay in Hatfall is collecting hats. You colllect them, steal them, embezzle them, do weird things with them. It is a simple mechanic that anyone can learn, given enough time. Although initial gameplay isn’t perfect, you need to be exact with you position and there is little room for error, the minigames and text are what makes Hatfall so great.

THAT DAMN WIZARD!

Throughout the game, after you have collected ~7 hats in a row (a more difficult task than it sounds), the wizard will make his first appearance. The wizard is short-tempered and will shuffle up the mechanics of one stage, because you stole his hat. The curses range from things as simple as a fountain of imps (obscuring the UI) to making the ground shake and rain blood (obscuring the ground and making you constantly walking). If you succeed completing one of these levels, the wizard will calm down and offer you an IOU, which can be used for temporary double hats, a quick payout, auto wizard next run, ot nothing at all. It makes for a fun mechanic that keeps the players on their toes once they got the hat collecting down.

Minigames - not so mini.

After you collect 25 hats (over time), you receive a gift. This gift will be placed on your desk, and after your run ends, you get to choose an item. These items trigger minigames or are cosmetic. Each of the minigames have well tought out design, and are all equally fun to play with. (Excepting the drinking minigame, that one is too difficult for me.) One thing that I like, with the Rondo invasion pack installed, is that after collecting enough hats, the game will spin up the minigames and change their theme.

Final conclusion

Phone games need to be more like this. Simple games that one can learn in a minute, but provide fun for long enough. Yahtzee has made the perfect game to represent Zero Punctuation and I wouldn’t have wanted anything else from him.

Get the game here:

Or on iOS: