YMMV / A Hat in Time

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Nobody really considers Hat Kid a villain, but it's up in the air how heroic she is.
    • She does defeat bad guys and help people, but she does it all in the name of gathering her Time Pieces back up, and doesn't deal with them after collecting said pieces (for example, she doesn't try to keep Snatcher from stealing anyone else's souls once he gives hers back). She also doesn't go after Mustache Girl whatsoever until Mustache Girl steals Hat Kid's Time Pieces to try and exterminate the Mafia. This can be seen as Hat Kid only caring about getting back home and just doing what it takes to get there, not seeing these troublemakers as threats worth fighting beyond when she has to (they are almost all Affably Evil), being too young to take them on in full force and knowing when to back off, or simply not caring about the enemies beyond how they affect her personally. The ending of the game seems to invoke this trope, as the player can choose whether to have Hat Kid help Mustache Girl fight the mafia or not by dropping a Time Piece to her, at risk of not returning home. Should you refuse, the ending doesn't change.
    • Adding fuel to the fire is the Seal the Deal DLC, where Hat Kid crashes the Arctic Cruise on an iceberg so she can grab the Time Piece on it, meaning she's alright with potentially harming or outright killing the crew and most of the main cast to get her Time Pieces. She does go back and rescue them instead of just ignoring them in favor of simply grabbing the Time Piece (including The Captain, despite his objections to being saved). Her diary entry after the fact suggests that this was more a case of Didn't Think This Through than her meaning to outright crash the ship and kill the people on board.
  • The above point often hinges on how evil you consider Mustache Girl and the Mafia:
    • Is Mustache Girl a Well-Intentioned Extremist who just went too far in her quest for peace, or is she using it as an excuse to rule the world? Is she even a villain at all? Even in her all-powerful overlord state, we only see her execute a single Mafia whose only defense was not punching an old man for two days straight.
    • Are the Mafia actual bad guys, or neutral but aggressive at worst? It's worth noting that, unless you attack them first or infiltrate their base, the only ones who go out of their way to hurt you are the Schmuck Bait guys who punch you after playing patty-cake, but they can also be seen beating up random citizens of Mafia Town - but as we don't see why these beatings start, it's entirely possible for them to be justified off-screen. Mustache Girl's Time Rift storybook paints them in a less ambiguous light; they are shown arriving on the island, smacking Mustache Girl as she tried to give a friendly greeting, and conquering the island by force.
  • Queen Vanessa's backstory is also subjected to this, making details about her true nature very sketchy. The Subcon Time Rift storybook indicates that she was a kind-hearted Nice Girl, who was corrupted by her anger and jealousy after finding her beloved Prince hanging out with another girl, which turned out to be a simple misunderstanding. The letters and diary entries in the manor, on the other hand, indicate that she was an unhinged Yandere from the start, and had a very disturbing obsession with the Prince to the point that she was willing to lock him up in the basement so that he wouldn't leave her. Her true nature is a subject of debate among fans.
  • The Conductor and DJ Grooves are practically swimming in this thanks to how each character acts depending on who wins the Award Ceremony. If the Conductor wins, he becomes an Entitled Bastard who is ready to abuse the power of the time pieces because DJ Grooves broke his win streak once while DJ Grooves is an utter Nice Guy, and if DJ Grooves wins, he turns out to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing made Drunk with Power thanks to his winning while the Conductor becomes a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Which one is their "true personality" is up for debate, thanks to the fact that it can go either way.
  • Due to the slightly ambiguous presentation of the Dead Bird Studios Time Rift pictures, there's been a fair bit of confusion over whether or not DJ Grooves and the Conductor knew each other before they owned the studio. If they didn't, their animosity toward each other feels more like a traditional occupational rivalry, but under the idea they were former friends, it puts a lot of their interactions under a potentially different lens.
  • The Captain decides, in the final act of Arctic Cruise, to go down with his ship, seemingly with the intent of dying. Does he want to go down with his ship out of obligation, or does he want to die and see his mentor again? Alternately, since, as he points out, he can't drown due to being a Walrus, does he not want anyone to risk their time saving him and focus on saving themselves?
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Considering the notorious reputation of Kickstarter-backed games like Mighty No. 9, as well as the mixed-to-negative reception of Yooka-Laylee a couple of months prior, many gamers and backers were starting to become skeptical and doubtful of A Hat in Time over fears that it would be "just another failed Kickstarter game". However, fast forward to October 2017, and those fears were lifted when the game was finally released on the same month. It received positive reviews from critics and players alike, and it even managed to get a 10 out of 10 score on Steam. As a result of this, many fans consider this game along with Super Mario Odyssey to be the true revival of the 3D collectathon platformer, as well as one of the best games of 2017 by far.
• Angst? What Angst?: Played for Laughs. When Hat Kid goes flying out of her spaceship and all her time pieces come flying out with her, draining away her only fuel source to get back home... she crosses her arms and huffs in mild irritation. She also has no real reaction to having her soul stolen besides remarking that she now feels exceptionally empty inside. Upon getting her soul back, she feels the usual amount of empty inside. However, the Nyakuza Metro's storybook tells a different story, as a page shows Hat Kid clearly concerned about it.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The finale of Alpine Skyline doesn't even have a proper boss fight like the other chapters, but rather, a Level in Boss Clothing where you have to go around the level and kill the purple flowers instead. Each of the flowers goes down in just four hits without much effort, and the only real challenge is getting to the flowers through some new obstacles. Despite the Foreshadowing building up to the finale as you collect the Time Pieces, the origin of the flowers is never explained beyond that, and the NPCs are just simply relieved that they're gone at the end.
• Award Snub: Was not even nominated for Best Indie Game, in spite of getting rave reviews and being considered one of the games responsible for bringing 3D platformers back into the spotlight, along with Super Mario Odyssey and the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.
• Breather Level:
  • Subcon Forest is much easier than Dead Bird Studio and Alpine Skyline, with mostly simple and easy missions and with a large part of the level not being involved with any missions. This is in part due to the level originally being planned to be the second chapter (with Dead Bird Studio being the third), until they switched places at some point in development.^note This also explains why a badge from Subcon Forest is required to complete Dead Bird Studio.
  • In Alpine Skyline, the Lava Cake is relatively simple platforming compared to the puzzles of Twilight Bell, complex platforming of the Windmill, and the confusing pathways and aggressive enemies of the Birdhouse.
  • The three community rifts in Death Wish; Rhythm Jump Studio, Twilight Travels, and The Mountain Rift. They're really straightforward time rift levels that are no different from the regular time rifts, and as such, are relatively easy when compared to the Nintendo Hard difficulty of the rest of the mode. There is no time limit or mode-specific gimmicks to be found, so you can finish these time rifts at your own leisurely pace. And as for the bonus objectives? Just collect every rift pon and storybook page. Simple.
  • For a late-game purple time rift, the Rumbi Factory is uncharacteristically easy. While the atmosphere can be unsettling, it mostly lacks the bottomless pits and precision platforming the other rifts had, making the only real threat the easily avoided rogue Rumbis. It's also not as stingy with the healing Pons in case you make a mistake.
• Broken Base:
  • JonTron's voice cameo, in spite of some controversy, managed to remain intact. This, like many of the other game's aspects, are in contrast to Yooka-Laylee, which suffered a much larger outcry over excluding Jon in an equally small part.
  • Fans are still divided over whether the boss battle of Chapter 2 is more befitting of DJ Grooves (fits the hitbox, use of marching penguins, disco balls, and photographs) or the Conductor (use of knives, bombs, and sawblades). Some fans simply choose to accept that the battle purposely mashes together elements of both directors to balance and avoid leaning specifically towards one.
  • There's also the debate on which Director is more fitting as the Big Bad of Chapter 2 and the rescuer of Hat Kid from the bomb. Some argue that the Conductor's more overtly egotistical and Jerkass nature makes him a better choice as the villain than the much nicer and supportive DJ Grooves, while others argue that DJ Grooves being Evil All Along and the Conductor being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold is more interesting and effective as a twist.
• Catharsis Factor: After the hell Snatcher puts you through with his contracts, seeing him pitifully beg for his life after his boss fight as Hat Kid, who has him at her mercy, casually doodles over his new contract, turning it into the exact opposite of what he wanted is massively satisfying.
• Cheese Strategy: As pointed out by Black Mage Benjamin in his review of the game, using the Projectile Badge and the Time Stop Hat turns the Final Boss fight from fair to an utter joke, as the player can easily hit the boss (who loves to Teleport Spam), no matter where they are on the map while also leaving the boss's attacks easy to dodge.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Mustache Girl discussing her plans to not only clear the Mafia from Mafia Town, but to also smash up their corpses, put the remains into jars, and then sell them. The funny part is that later, you meet the Mafia Boss, who's had exactly that done to him, but he only seems mildly upset about it.
  • The book that The Snatcher reads after Subcon Forest is finished is called "HOW TO KILL KIDS". If you complete his Death Wish challenges in the DLC, he complains that the book was garbage.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The headless statues scattered around the Subcon Forest are not to be trifled with. You don't come across them often, but whenever you do, get away from their vicinity as fast as possible, as these statues will spring to life and start chasing after you the moment you're anywhere near them. They move faster than Hat Kid's default running speed and are totally Nigh-Invulnerable, so they cannot be killed. They can easily chew away at Hat Kid's health in a matter of seconds, leading to some cheap deaths. Many new players are often caught off-guard by them because they see them as just seemingly harmless objects until it is too late.
  • The Lazy Paw Gang Members encountered in Alpine Skyline and Time's End, who are invisible unless attacking you, with only a faint outline of them being able to be seen while invisible, can't be hit while invisible, run as fast as Hat Kid and chase her on sight, automatically steal her hat and/or pons and knock her down once they get close, and once they have stolen something from her, they will start using a shove attack which has huge knockback if it connects, which, since they are usually encountered around ledges, can easily knock Hat Kid off the level to take off half her health (one hit from the shove, the other from the bottomless pit/lava).
• Disappointing Last Level:
  • Chapter 4, Alpine Skyline, the level before the final chapter, suffers this for more than a few people. It's the only Chapter in the game without traditional "Acts", the level's size is considered overwhelming and tiring to traverse, has the most obvious technical issues in the game, and unlike the other chapter settings, doesn't have much in the way of obvious lore (relegated primarily to the Time Rift) or memorable characters. It also lacks a proper boss fight in the finale. Fortunately, people typically enjoy the actual platforming segments that lead to the time pieces... once they reach them, anyway.
  • An example to a world rather than the whole game: compared to the entire rest of the world, which is a favorite of many players, the final non-boss battle level of Subcon Forest (at least going by act number order) is a short, non-dangerous, scooter ride around a short pathway, clicking on some NPCs. It's very anticlimactic, especially considering that as the final non-boss level of the second-to-last world, players are likely to play it late in their adventure, and so most players recommend doing it first, as the other possible missions^* a miniboss battle against a toilet, or the terrifying sneak through Queen Vanessa's manor are far more climactic and interesting.
  • The last level anyone is likely to play will be "Cheating the Race," a level all the way back in Mafia Town. The player is recommended to have the Time Stop Hat before entering, which is only available once you reach Alpine Skyline, the last full world (due to this being the only level where Time Stop Yarn can be found, making it unable to be crafted early on), and it requires 32 pieces of yarn, so by the time they have enough yarn that's probably the last Time Piece they have yet to collect. The level itself is very underwhelming, especially if you have the Fast Hatter Badge, just being a simple race along a short, simple path, with the hardest part being spamming the Time Stop Hat's ability. It is actually possible to complete the level without the Time Stop Hat should you have the Scooter badge and enough reflexes and skill, though the window of error is so small that you can expect to replay and sit through many loading screens in the process.
  • The last Act of Arctic Cruise, "Rock The Boat", is generally disliked for essentially being a back-and-forth Escort Mission where you have to save all of the most notable passengers of the ship as the ship sinks, with a time limit added for saving the Captain. While Arctic Cruise is generally divisive for the frequent Fetch Quest nature of its missions (most infamously "Ship Shape", due to the very confusing layout of the ship), "Rock The Boat" is seen as wasting the otherwise interesting setting, as well as there also being no boss for that chapter.
  • While Nyakuza Metro was more well received than Arctic Cruise at launch, many were yet again disappointed by its final act, "Rush Hour." While the setup of Hat Kid being pursued through the Metro by a massive horde of The Empress's underlings is pretty intense and exciting, the fact it's mainly just a chase through the same area as the rest of the chapter that also fails to end with a proper new boss fight for the second DLC in a row left a lot of players considering it anti-climactic.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • The Snatcher gets this treatment from time to time. In fanworks, it's common for him to be portrayed as a friend or even father figure to Hat Kid (willingly or not), and a harmless prankster at the very worst. While fans do acknowledge the fact that he is a soul-stealing demon who kills his victims when their contracts expire and kills them if they don't sign in the first place, the fact that the only reason he's friends with Hat Kid is because he got tricked on a contract (and Death Wish makes it clear he's not particularly thrilled about it) is usually either glossed over or hand-waved.
  • Mustache Girl is particularly prone to receiving this treatment and it's common for fanworks to either better justify her actions and/or have her perform a Heel–Face Turn and become friends with Hat Kid again, with some even proclaiming her as the true hero in the game. While she is an Well-Intentioned Extremist with a sympathetic and tragic backstory and isn't entirely wrong about the world being filled with bad guys (considering everyone Hat Kid meets tends to either be a jerk or downright evil), she is still an Ax-Crazy, hypocritcal, extremist Knight Templar who downright steals Hat Kid's time pieces at one point to take over the world as an tyrannical dictator.
  • While the Conductor can be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, particularly if DJ Grooves wins, he's still a massive Jerkass and an ill-tempered Bad Boss who has no qualms about putting the Express Owls and Hat Kid through downright dangerous stunts for his films. This is on top of what happens if he wins the award ceremony, in which he hoards a Time Piece and attempts to murder Hat Kid. That said, it's not uncommon for fans to portray him in a better and amicable light in fanworks compared to canon, especially if they go with DJ Grooves winning the ceremony.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Queen Vanessa. Being featured prominently in one of the few alpha build missions helped, but even before the game was released in any form people took notice of her from the trailers thanks to being completely terrifying, to the point where adult gaming commentators and journalists have admitted they find her pants-wettingly scary. Being the star of a horror game-styled level in a platformer that otherwise lives up to its branding of "cute as heck" helps, as well as the tragic backstory behind her and The Snatcher.
  • Mafia Bartender gained quite a few fans, showed actual kindness towards Hat Kid, Mafia very endearing.
  • The C.A.W. Agents, due to their amusing incompetence and overly serious personalities.
  • The Seals in Arctic Cruise, due to being adorable and comically incompetent.
  • In spite of being scrapped and disliked by the dev team, Timmy is still fairly popular among the fanbase, which has resulted in him being reintegrated into the game through mods, and having had two modding jams oriented around him. He still tends to be portrayed as the butt of the joke, though.
  • Even more popular than Timmy among the scrapped characters, Moonjumper is so widely loved by the fandom that he's been near universally accepted back into the game's lore through Fanon.
  • Hat Kid's Adult form — Hat Adult — is also incredibly popular amongst fans, despite also being scrapped, with many finding an adult Hat Kid to be incredibly intriguing and interesting. This has led many wanting to see her appear in a future game (as unlikely as it is).
• Evil Is Cool:
  • The Snatcher has become one of the most beloved and popular characters in the game, due to his hammy, Faux Affably Evil personality, fun boss fight and his backstory as the Prince.
  • The Empress quickly became a fan-favorite shortly after the release of Nyakuza Metro, due to her affable, but incredibly fearful and intimidating presence, being one of the few villains to truly terrify Hat Kid (and can even take her down in one-hit if attacked), even moreso once she sends out the Nyakuza after her.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
  • The titular protagonists are named Hat/Bow Kid, not Hat/Bow Girl. None of the marketing calls them that, nor are they called that in-game by any of the characters. Calling them as such is an easy way for fans to jump on you.
  • The infamous Moleman111 ARG is explicitly and officially non-canon, and it is not supported or endorsed by Gears for Breakfast. It is little more than a personal Staff-Created Fan Work from William T. Nicholls (the lead 3D artist at Gears for Breakfast) that he did for fun. Trying to suggest that anything from it is canon will quickly get you corrected by annoyed fans.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Oh so much. Possibly the biggest one is Hat Kid's backstory; her home planet, her other adventures, how she came across the time pieces...
  • What does Mustache Girl do with the single time piece you can optionally throw to her at the end?
  • What is Bow Kid's relation to Hat Kid? Who even is Bow Kid, anyway?
  • A few of the fan levels in the Workshop involve refitting characters or concepts that were ultimately dropped from the game (but preserved as assets in the SDK and frozen in Queen Vanessa's manor), generally the Moonjumper, Timmy, and the Shapeshifter.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The game has been called "Hatty Time" as a shortened form of "A Hat In Time" by the playerbase, with the name stemming from Yahtzee Croshaw's review of the game (which he constantly used as the full game name was "a bit rubbish").
  • The version of The Snatcher fought in the final Death Wish mission has been dubbed "Ultra Snatcher" by the fandom.
  • Several fans have decided to call The Prince, "Luka" or "Lucas" after the Snatcher's voice actor, Luke Sizemore.
  • Many fans have referred to the non-canon ARG and other related material to it by lead 3D artist William Nicholls as "Hablore" after his nickname of "Habboi".
• Fanon:
  • The Moonjumper's reintegration into the game's lore. When the prince died, he was split into two entities: His soul left his body and became a ghost, now known as The Snatcher, while his empty corpse transformed into an entirely separate being trapped within the horizon - The Moonjumper. The concept is sometimes explained to new fans as a bit like becoming a Heartless and a Nobody. This is near universally accepted by the fandom, although additional details are often left up to interpretation and may vary slightly from person to person, such as Moonjumper's exact personality and how much he remembers the details of his past. However he's mostly commonly seen as soft-spoken and charming yet sinisterly manipulative, making him a Foil to the far more upfront, boisterous and blatantly evil Snatcher.
  • The Conductor being part fire spirit is fairly common in fanworks, due to having physical traits of both a fire spirit and an express owl. Exactly how this manifests in his character depends on the person.
  • Canonically, Hat Kid lacks an English name, with her name being in a deliberately untranslated alien language. That, however, doesn’t stop fans from giving her a human name in fan works anyway. While there isn't a general consensus on what her human name would be, Hattie tends to be the most commonly used as a way to retain the hat theme. Some also call her "Heni" thanks to the Moleman111 ARG.^note This is despite the ARG implying that "Heni" is another name for Paulla (who is a different person from Hat Kid), with Hat Kid herself only being referred to by a title ("Moon Child") like in the game.
  • A common theory as to why Hat Kid is so protective of the Time Pieces, besides desiring to get back home, is to protect the space-time continuum from being interfered with and prevent them from being abused by others. While this does make a lot of sense, especially given what Mustache Girl does with them upon stealing them, canonically, the reason is simply that Hat Kid needs them to get home. Her wanting to prevent them from being abused or protect the time and space continuum is never implied at any point (and Hat Kid can optionally give Mustache Girl one time piece at the end).
  • The exact relationship and dynamic between Hat Kid and Bow Kid is not touched upon in canon (due to Bow Kid being little more than a co-op character), however, their dynamic in fanworks tends to be a Red Oni, Blue Oni type, with Hat Kid being impulsive, mischievous and hot-headed, and Bow Kid being calmer and more timid. To go with this, Bow Kid is often portrayed as being more of a kindhearted straight man and the voice of reason to contrast against Hat Kid's morally questionable, snarkier and mischievous behavior.
• Fandom Rivalry: A not-so-minor one has popped up with the fandom of Yooka-Laylee. Considering their similarities (both were funded via Kickstarter, they're both "collectathon" 3D platformers inspired by Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64, etc.), you'd think they'd be Friendly Fandoms... But alas, thanks to Broken Base over some of Yooka-Laylee's design decisions as well as some other bits of controversy (the biggest of which involving a certain guest voice actor that was originally going to appear in not just this game, but Yooka-Laylee as well), people are more than a little bit torn over which of the two games is "better".
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • Mustache Girl being The Atoner and attempting to repair her friendship with Hat Kid is a common plot thread in fanfics, helped along by the game's originally planned ending leaning into it. It's also common to see her be nicknamed "Mu" by Hat Kid.
  • An older Hat Kid going back to the planet either out of nostalgia or necessity is an incredibly common premise in Time Skip fanfics and can often overlap with the above.
  • The Snatcher turning back into The Prince and/or having to confront Vanessa is a common plot in Snatcher-centric fics.
  • It's incredibly widespread and common to see fanworks and mods reintegrate the game’s scrapped characters into the game’s setting and have them interact with the final game's cast, particularly with Moonjumper and Timmy.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • Despite or even because of their incredibly antagonistic rivalry, Discotrain, aka The Conductor/DJ Grooves, is an incredibly popular ship in the community. It helps that they have a lot in common in spite of their differences.
  • As for Hat Kid, you'll most often see her paired with Mustache Girl aka Hatstache, likely because their brief time as friends near the beginning of the game shows that they probably could've gotten along rather well if Mustache Girl hadn't gone mad with her lust for revenge.
• Friendly Fandoms: With fans of Super Mario Odyssey, since both games are hat-themed 3D platformers that were released in the same month as each other, and both are seen as proper revivals of the 3D collectathon platformer genre. It's not uncommon to stumble upon fan art and fan fiction depicting Hat Kid with Mario and Cappy. The game being full of Mario references helps too.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Combining the Time Stop Hat with the badge that lowers hat ability cooldowns makes just about every part of the game that involves timing a breeze. This ranges from platforming to fighting just about every enemy or boss. The hat alone helps, but adding the badge makes there be basically no cooldown, so you can spam it for an almost endless chain of time-slowing. Luckily, even if you get these as early as possible, you can't make use of the combo until you've cleared a fair amount of all worlds (and have a ton of yarn), so it doesn't ruin the challenge of earlier levels unless you go out of your way to avoid/replay them. The Time Stop Hat was later nerfed to take up more cooldown time, even when wearing the badge.
  • The developer-made (or at least endorsed, since Hat Kid has an exclusive voice clip for it) Lilac's Headpiece badge can be an extremely powerful Sequence Breaking tool when used properly.
• Genius Bonus: A Crate on the docks for boarding the boat in Arctic Cruise reads: "The label in this crate reads PBR. Whoever they are, they're good at making shiny things". This is a reference to an engine rendering technique called "Physically Based Materials", PBR for short, that deals with how objects react to light reflecting off of a given object in a realistic manner.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Shromb Eggs, which are mostly encountered in the Birdhouse Peak in Alpine Skyline, are Action Bombs disguised as bird eggs. They're perfectly well-hidden and will pop up just mere inches of your position, catching you off-guard when you least expect it. They explode on contact so direct attacks are useless against them without obviously taking damage, and they can also be pushed around by variants of the Mad Crows^note the ones with pompadours and sunglasses for assistance. There are only two ways to deal with them; either get away and wait for them to detonate after a certain amount of time, or destroy them safely with the bombs from the Brewing Hat.
    • They become infamous on the Death Wish "Bird Sanctuary", as they can ruin your Pacifist Run by killing any bird near their radius, which counts the same as if you killed them, and sometimes triggering too far from your reach. And let's not mention if you try to accomplish the one hit badge requirement.
  • There's a variation of the Mad Crows which have pompadours and pink sunglasses. They don't deal damage but they have large knock-back and chase after Hat Kid quickly once in range, which is especially bad since they're usually on small platforms over pits and they're fast enough to attack again before Hat Kid can recover from the last hit. Special mention goes to their appearance in The Lab Time Rift where they're everywhere and can make the level hell.
• Good Bad Bugs: "Boop clipping", introduced in the Nyakuza DLC. By using the "Boop" animation in certain situations, such as ledge grabbing or collecting a Time Piece, you can clip through walls and occasionally floors.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: The Death Wish game mode has been criticized even by people who were disappointed by the relatively easy difficulty of the main game, often labeling the game mode as blatantly unfair for the wrong reasons; common complaints are the missions tend to be very strict in regards to time management, the side bonuses are more or less required to unlock more Stamps for progress (to the point of being contradictory, necessitating another playthrough), the sometimes heavy RNG at play, and that a few missions expect the player to be familiar with certain speedrunning tactics without properly disclosing them. Fortunately though, there is the Peace and Tranquillity mode, which does ease the difficulty a bit.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the Alpha Builds, the Snatcher and Moonjumper were in some sort of conflict with each other, with Snatcher stating "This forest isn't big enough for the two of us." The final game would remove the Moonjumper entirely, and replace him with Snatcher as the sole antagonist of Subcon.
  • The release date of Nyakuza Metro, May 10th, is just a day after Yakuza Kiwami 2's PC version release date.
  • One level has Hat Kid help solve a murder mystery on a train, and she can choose herself as the perpetatror for the crime. Come late 2023, and this game would be featured as a skin pack along with other indie games in AmongUs, meaning Hat Kid can once again help solve a murder mystery (for real this time), or potentially be the murderer herself.
• I Knew It!: Despite being repeatedly told a port for Nintendo Switch was unlikely, fans figured that the game would be getting ported to the Switch due to how well it fits on the system. They were proven correct after the game was officially announced for the Switch.
• Love to Hate: Almost all the major antagonists throughout the game have their fanbases, but The Snatcher is probably the most popular of them all, notwithstanding his Draco in Leather Pants treatment.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Conductor and DJ Grooves are a pair of eccentric rival film directors who rope Hat Kid into their latest competition for the annual Bird Movie Awards. Fashioning Hat Kid into the star of their latest films, the Conductor stages a fake murder for footage while Grooves runs a PR campaign to boost her popularity. For the climax of their movies, the two put Hat Kid through bombastic, dangerous, challenges. Whichever one wins the Award then steals a Time Piece in order to go back in time and make it so they’ve won every award, with the loser informing Hat Kid of the betrayal so she’ll stop him. When confronted, the winner utilizes various props in combat before stopping the fight to earnestly try to win Hat Kid over, only to use the opportunity to plant a bomb on her which the loser manages to defuse. When Mustache Girl steals the Time Pieces to judge everyone, the directors put aside their differences and sacrifice themselves to help Hat Kid defeat her and, when brought back, beg Hat Kid to stay on the planet and remain their friend.
• Memetic Loser: The cut co-op character (called "Timmy" by fans) became something of a fandom in-joke, due to the fact that he made it to being fully modeled, before being scrapped due to the crew not liking his design and eventually being replaced by Bow Kid. Even in a popular mod that reintegrated him into the game, they still made him playable by making you go to the kitchen's trash can, referencing how Timmy is often depicted in dumpsters in the fandom.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Cute-as-heck", the Word of God description of the game (which is not inaccurate).
  • "Too much voice acting", in the same vein as "too much water", in response to Gamespot's criticism of the game being that the voice work was too over-the-top, which apparently necessitated a three-point drop.
  • If you ever enter a speedrun stream of this game, expect to hear debates about which palette is the best, and whether Ladybug Hairband or Dino Hat is the better Sprint Hat.
  • PECK or alternatively PECK NECK. One, children swearing even in an Informed Obscenity kind of way is still hilarious, and two, the Conductor's fame helped a lot, and so the word caught on as an alternative, friendly but amusing swear.
  • Mid-August of 2018 had the Gears for Breakfast Twitter centering their tweets around both extremely smug looking Hat Kid and "#WhereIsHatKid?"
  • Hat Kid's dance from the Seal the Deal update has been receiving parodies. The most popular of which being SMUG DANCIN. Beware spoilers for Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Nier Automata, and probably other things if you click the link.
  • Due to Mustache Girl's sympathetic characterization, not necessarily being wrong about the planet's denizens, and some of Hat Kid's own actions being morally dubious, it's a meme on the Steam forums (generally ironically) to call her the game's real hero.
  • Snatcher yelling "FOOOOOOOOOL!" is very memorable, to the point that many people will joke about situations where they can yell similar-sounding words.
• Memetic Personality Change:
  • In canon, Bow Kid doesn't have much of a distinctive personality of her own (being only a clone of Hat Kid). In fanon however, Bow Kid is often portrayed as being a Foil to Hat Kid, being more soft-spoken, serious and cautious in contrast with Hat Kid's more upfront, mischievous and occasionally reckless personality. Her cat themed attire has also led fans to give her a massive love of cats.
  • Timmy's official personality is largely unknown due to him being scrapped early on, however he is largely depicted in fanon as being a borderline Surfer Dude and thrill junkie who speaks in Totally Radical slang.
  • As stated above, To contrast with the Snatcher's more upfront and boisterous personality, Moonjumper is almost always portrayed in fanworks as being more soft-spoken and charming yet sinisterly manipulative by comparison.
• Moe:
  • Hat Kid! Seriously, just listen to her voice clips and try not to smile!
  • Bow Kid is adorable on the same level as Hat Kid.
  • Many of the minor NPCs can be very cute, but the Seals take the cake here.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The guitar riff that plays after you defeat some of the bosses, which feels extremely satisfying after kicking asses.
  • The music that plays when near a time piece, and the subsequent flourish when you touch it. The former is so relaxing it barely even needs the association to count.
  • The Death Wish variants are also extremely relaxing as well as very satisfying and/or reliving to hear after completing one of the many brutal and Nintendo Hard death wish contracts.
• Nightmare Retardant: Learning the tightly-scripted sequence of "Queen Vanessa's Manor" and how little threat her AI actually poses completely defangs the signature fear factor of the level. Vanessa herself only moves her patrol location at certain moments and won't actually pursue you through doors or burst into rooms at random. Every time she enters a room the player is in, it is scripted, and she stays in the hall until she's alerted by a required action. Her voice lines and the visual cue of her shadow creeping into the edges of the rooms create effective tension, but she's not nearly as dangerous as it would seem to a first-time player.
• One-Scene Wonder: Queen Vanessa only appears in one act of one chapter of the game, but you are not likely to ever forget her. It's telling that she made it into the logo of the game alongside more prominent players; she just makes that much of an impression.
• Porting Disaster: While the Nintendo Switch port is largely functional- admittedly an impressive feat in itself, given that its engine wasn't compatible with the Switch's hardware- it still leaves a lot to be desired. The framerate is at 30fps with frequent skipping, the loading times are far longer, the textures have been noticably compressed and muddied, several effects are lost, numerous and frequent graphical and technical glitches not in the other versions are present (especially in its initial state) and is even prone to crashing entirely on occasion. While the worst glitches of the port have since been patched out, it's still rather rough in places and is largely considered by most to be the weakest version. It did have one advantage of being the only console version with the DLC packs early on, but with both packs now being on the other consoles, its only real advantage now is the ability to play it on the go...and with the Steam Deck available and the superior Steam version of the game verified to run on that, even that is no longer the case, so now the only reason to play the Switch version is if you either don't have the Steam Deck (which is admittedly a more niche product than the Switch), or if you have literally nothing else to play it on.
• Recurring Fanon Character:
  • "Hat Adult", the Over Night Age Up of Hat Kid seen in some early builds has a lot of fanart dedicated to her, for obvious reasons. To a lesser extent, "Bow Adult" and "Mustache/Beard Woman", the adult versions of Bow Kid and Mustache Girl respectively, are also occasionally seen.
  • "Timmy", the original Player Two of the game, before being officially replaced by Bow Kid. Even though he was replaced because the crew disliked him, fans latched onto him and had him continue appearing in fanwork, usually as Hat Kid's sweetheart.
  • Moonjumper, an initial part of the Big Bad Duumvirate in Subcon Forest, before being removed in favor of having the Snatcher as the only Arc Villain. He is generally considered to have once been the same entity as the Snatcher, called "The Prince", before being separated, "Heartless"-style.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The fact that the hookshot ability is relegated to being an equippable badge, rather than a permanent upgrade for the umbrella, means that it needs to take up one of three badge slots at all times. Many fans are disappointed about this approach because the hookshot badge just takes up unnecessary space, and limits their creativity in making useful badge loadouts of their choice. Same for "fun" badges like Camera or Mumble, which take up badge slots despite not providing any bonuses, making it unfair that you're being penalized for using them.
  • For the original base game and the console versions, getting all hat flairs, color palettes, and remixes from the rift slot machine is impossible because of the finite amount of rift tokens available, as well as the amount of RNG involved just to get a particular prize you want. The modding update for the PC version rectified this to an extent, as you can play an infinite amount of Workshop levels to gain additional tokens.
  • The timer for "speedrun" missions/bonuses continuing to run during cutscenes in Death Wish is also generally disliked by a sizable chunk of the player base, being seen as leading to cheap failures that are not the fault of the player but rather the game itself due to certain cutscenes being completely unskippable.
  • The Relic Map badge was hated for being confusing to interpret, and making it incredibly frustrating to find relics or the remaining tokens on Alpine Skyline, easily the largest level in the game. It was later altered, removing the map entirely, and giving it functionality more akin to a compass when you're holding still, making it far more manageable.
  • In several vertical sections, the game starts to move the death plane upward as you progress, making you take damage and teleporting you back to where you were standing if you fall down a bit. While this is useful and welcome in places like the Alpine Skyline Windmill so you don't have to start the climb over again, in more open areas like Nyakuza Metro, it becomes extremely annoying and difficult to safely return to a lower point in the area, since the game assumes you want to stay at a higher point even if you decide you're done and want to explore something further down, and trying to jump down will often result in you taking damage and getting sent right back where you tried to leave.
• Shipping: The Snatcher x Queen Vanessa has gained quite a following among the fanbase, due to the fact that they were once an Official Couple at one point. But since the tragic misunderstanding, both have gone their separate ways, never to see each other again. Many fans were hoping for them to get back together again to conclude their heartbreaking tale of love, perhaps as the ultimate ending to Subcon Forest. Alas, it didn't happen, and the latter character is only relevant in one act and a Time Rift.
• Shocking Moments: Online co-op was often requested in the game, and Nyakuza Metro revealed that they were doing just that... And also allowing upwards of 50 players into one level!
• Slow-Paced Beginning: Mafia Town has been criticized for lending the game a dull first impression and not demonstrating its strengths, having a relatively mundane theme and almost no linear platforming sections, making it feel somewhat confusing to navigate.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The Snatcher is one of the best bosses in the game, buuuuut his animations can leave something to be desired, particularly his lack of expression during some scenes.
  • During the boss battle against the leader of Mafia Town in Act 4 of Chapter 1, when he is rolling on the giant ball of Mafia goons, he simply runs on top of the indent you can climb into instead of jumping on it, meaning that he for a single second at a time is walking in mid-air.
  • When Hat Kid closes her eyes, the eyelids don't quite cover the whole eye when you see them from a certain angle, such as during the scene after defeating Mafia Boss.
  • During the Battle of the Birds boss fight, there are several birds watching from the sidelines. Unfortunately during the final phase, when the curtains fall, you can still see them clipping through said curtains.
  • After the Snatcher boss fight and the cutscene, you can wander toward the screen, past the Time Piece, and faintly see the model the game used moments before for the defeated, weary Snatcher in the darkness below you.
• Strawman Has a Point: Possibly intentionally, given the nature of the game, but Mustache Girl's eventual claim that everyone on the planet are criminals and jerks is, given the player's own interaction with them, not exactly wrong. It's just that she fails to realize that she's not sitting so pretty herself.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • "Your Contract Has Expired", Snatcher's boss fight music, shares similarities with Megalovania and ASGORE. This one lead to countless mash-ups of both (or throth... ?) songs incorporating the respective theme in diverse ways.
    • The Megalovania similarity isn't helped by gameplay similarities : both Sans and Snatcher are Glass Cannons with nigh undodgeable attacks, while Sans turns you blue to damage you, Hat Kid has to make Snatcher turn blue to damage him, and both have a phase where nothing happens before your victory.
  • "The Windmill Peak", the Great Windmill's music, has a very similar structure to the Song of Storms, also played in a windmill. Its main melody is similar to Lost Woods theme from the same game.
  • "The Twilight Bell Peak" introduction notes have a motif similar to the finale of the first movement of "La mer" from Claude Debussy.
  • "Ship Shape" sounds an awful lot like the infamous pizza delivery song from the video game adaptation of Spider-Man 2.
  • Collapsing Time Rift, the theme that plays in the collapsing Time Rifts in the Seal the Deal DLC has an almost identical structure and a similar melody to the 1:46 mark of 'Hurry Up!' from Wario Land 4, which fits, as they both play during Escape Sequences.
• That One Achievement: "Secret Intruder", which requires you to go through Chapter 2's Act 1, Dead Bird Studio, without being spotted at all. Getting even an owl or penguin to have a "?" once on their heads is enough to screw you out of the achievement. It's amazingly easy to screw up in the last parts of the Act, especially in the last "autoscroller" segment. However, with some very careful platforming, it is possible to get this achievement more easily...by visiting the empty studio in Act 6 and ignoring the path, going to the end of the studio instead. The map is reused from Act 1 and fully loaded, and the death barriers in the track gate past the elevator can be circumvented to explore the rest of the map, where there are no guards and all of the other rail carts are functional.
  • "Encore!" and "No Time To Explain," as well. "Encore!" requires you to never get knocked into the crowd during "The Big Parade," which is nearly impossible without some serious planning, and "No Time To Explain" requires you to finish "Train Rush" without dying or picking up any time extensions, practically requiring you to have the Time Stop Hat.
• Tainted by the Preview: While the announcement of the Creator DLC project and Vanessa's Curse was otherwise received well, the fact that it is exclusive to the PC release has soured a good amount of fans, particularly those who own the console versions of the game, since they’re basically locked out of future content.
• That One Attack:
  • Both Snatcher EX and Ultra Snatcher in Death Wish have an attack where they'll conjure up three magic blasts around the arena simultaneously. Unlike the original Snatcher fight, these blasts produce shockwaves that cover the entire arena this time around. The rings intersect with each other, of course, making gaps difficult to find and land in, and as the battle goes on, the Snatcher will begin to spam the attack, creating so many blasts that you'd think it would never stop. Oh, and the blasts that create the rings are columns, meaning you aren't safe in the air and can't jump over the spots where they originate. Even further, the deadliness is exacerbated by the fact that some blasts can track your location, forcing you to constantly move as you try to dodge the incoming shockwaves. It was initially even worse with Ultra Snatcher because in addition to the shockwaves, the blasts also produced directional sparks (the same ones used by the Mafia Boss), adding more pressure into dodging them and turning the fight into Bullet Hell. The developers must have come around to think that aspect was too much, and during the tweaks to Death Wish, the sparks were removed from the Ultra Snatcher fight. All the same, a player's best hope of not being killed by a long barrage of tri-blasts is to have a flask on hand to toss and just cancel the attack.
  • Mustache Girl EX's laser attack is pretty nasty, since it now sweeps back and forth. This is a problem when added to the fact that its size leaves a narrow margin for it to be jumped over, its reach goes across the arena, and the fact that the laser may sweep right into you as it spawns, depending on where you're standing.
    • Mustache Girl's slap attack also deserves mention both in her regular and EX forms. The attack is very fast and can hit you pretty much instantly after she teleports in front of you. Not only that, the hitbox for the slap is deceptively large; using the Time Stop Hat reveals it extends past her hand, meaning she can still hit you even if you're standing a bit away from her. Dodging it pretty much requires use of the Time Stop Hat or having very quick reflexes. Years after the game released, a patch was added to the PC version that thankfully fixed the hitbox, but console players are unfortunately out of luck.
• That One Boss:
  • The Snatcher, due to his very fast attack pattern, and the fact that he doesn't drop health pons. This is somewhat balanced out due to him only taking five hits, but it's still brutal. Even more so in Death Wish, where he's more aggressive and relentless in his attacks, and his ultra form has him utilize attacks from the other bosses you just fought. And unlike the other bosses, you don't even have the ability to use the Time Stop Hat to make some of his attacks more manageable, since he steals your hat at the beginning of the fight. At least he has the decency to drop a health pon every two hits in the Death Wish.
  • The director boss battle. You fight against either DJ Grooves or the Conductor, depending on who lost the Annual Bird Movie Award. In addition to having hard-to-dodge area attacks, the second part of the battle has the director slap a bomb on you, which you have 80 seconds to defuse by hitting the boss a few more times. If you don't, it's an instant game over, and you have to start the fight all over again. Finally, no matter which director you're fighting, they're a Damage-Sponge Boss of the first order, requiring thirty hits to take down. That's more than the final boss. And if you thought that wasn't enough, in Death Wish, you must fight both of them at the same time.
• That One Level:
  • The Big Parade is easily the most difficult part of Dead Bird Studio, requiring you to run around on rooftops over a crowd that damages you if you fall into it. You're being followed by owls who follow your every move and damage you if they touch you. Later you have to turn on the fireworks which starts shooting homing fireworks at you and occasionally covers several platforms with hard to see sparks. To score well you have to run around and pick up tokens from fans but they have time limits and can easily appear on the other side of the area, it also has very few Pons so you can't gather many points from them.
    • "The Great Big Hootenanny" in Death Wish makes The Big Parade even more hellish by having five times as many owls follow you, turning the level into one dangerous game of Snake. This becomes especially worse if you're going for the bonus objectives; one of which requires careful movements to avoid hitting the owl band, and the other requiring awareness of your surroundings and time management to make sure none of the DJ Grooves tokens expire. And to top it off, there are no health pons this time.
  • Chapter 2, Act 6: Award Ceremony. Following the initial fakeout, it would be expected that you could go back to the selectable Chapter 6 with the new information Hat Kid recieved and fight the director, but instead you have to select Chapter 1 in order to return to Dead Bird Studios at night and from there proceed through an overly long and very complicated level beneath the studio with several areas where you have to make big jumps but can easily fall (particularly when having to jump onto thin wires), leading to a lot of frustrating backtracking and a longer time to reach the boss fight than what should have been necessary. This is also an area where the camera and game design bugging up can be especially harmful.
  • Chapter 4: Alpine Skyline. Due to how huge the level is, it's a chore to get from Point A to Point B, and a lot of the mountains are inundated with annoying enemies, some of which can knock you into the Bottomless Pits below.
  • The Birdhouse is the hardest section of Alpine Skyline with two areas before the Birdhouse itself with all three being filled with Demonic Spiders and Goddamned Bats. The setpiece itself has the most bottomless pits and fewest checkpoints and has many diverging paths which can cause players to get lost easily.
  • "Ship Shape", the second act of the Arctic Cruise DLC, is regarded by players as incredibly stressful. The player must run around the ship doing tasks for the Captain collecting items and bringing them to certain places on the ship. Doesn't sound too hard? Well, when an object spawns to be picked up (and it could spawn anywhere at all on the ship), a time limit starts to tick down. If it runs out, the object disappears and the Captain's patience is depleted. If the Captain runs out of patience, you fail. Plus, the ship in general is very large and very mazelike. If you don't have the ship's layout 100% committed to memory, you're going to have a bad time as you get lost with the time limit ticking away (it doesn't help that the guide arrows don't always work well, and can sometimes lead you in circles). And eventually, objects are going to start appearing and expiring so rapidly that you won't have a hope in Hades of reaching them in time. And while you can hold multiple objects at once, the more you pick up, the harder it gets to balance them and the higher the risk of you dropping everything. And the music speeding up as you run the meter does NOT help. And the cherry on it all? This level has a Death Wish variation...
  • "Beat the Heat", one of the many Death Wish challenges. The player must play "Heating Up Mafia Town" again, but with a catch: the heat is slowly rising up, and when it reaches its limit (which is indicated by the yellow heatwaves on the screen), it can damage Hat Kid. The player can reduce the heat meter by swimming in a body of water, but no more than two times. Why? Because this challenge has also two optional challenges: the player can't take damage from the heat or the lava and the player can only cooldown two times and no more than that. Not to mention that this is the first Death Wish challenge. There is a way to reduce the difficulty if you die or retry enough times, but this challenge shows that Death Wish will not be kind to the player. AT. ALL.
  • "Bird Sanctuary" in Death Wish. The main objective of this mission is to complete the Birdhouse stage without killing any of the bird enemies, which sounds simple on paper, but unfortunately the mission is made way worse with the inclusion of the Shromb Eggs. If any of the birds are within the Shromb Egg's blast radius, they'll die from the explosion, and their deaths from that will still count towards failure. This is one of the few missions in Death Wish where your failure comes from cheap circumstances that are beyond your control.
  • "10 Seconds Until Self-Destruct" is a absolutely brutal version of "Train Rush", where the timer gives a very low amount of time to go through the entire train, requiring you to both get next to every clock to not blow up, while having to hurry through a difficult gauntlet and activate the many platform switches to move on. Due to the very strict time-limit, not only do you not have much time to really plan your platforming, you also are punished even heavier than normal deathwish missions for taking damage, as time spent being hit is extra time off your counter. The final segment is especially cruel as it forces you to move through moving lava (which will stun you for a bit while your character gets burned by it, possibly leading into situations where you take another hit due to not being in complete control of your character) in the right way to activate switches, then a final segment where you have to dodge cannons while jumping on all of the now rapidly rising and falling platforms, still within that incredibly strict time limit. In previous versions of the game, it used to be one of the first missions on the Chapter 2 Death Wish map, making it a huge Difficulty Spike compared to the much easier maps like the community rift and "The Great Big Hootenanny". It was since moved to be after "The Great Big Hootenanny", but is still one of the hardest Deathwish maps in the game.
• That One Sidequest:
  • In the earliest Alpha builds, the "Balloon Race in Mafia Town" mission was notoriously difficult. On paper, it sounds simple enough: Race a Mafia guy in his balloon while you're on a rocket, which largely just involves passing through rings without crashing into walls. The problem? The early rocket controls were extremely finicky, and the Mafia balloon was fast, requiring you to hit almost every one of the much smaller Nitro Boost rings along the way (with said finicky controls). The very first patch for the game made this easier almost immediately, but it still stayed quite difficult. In the final game, your opponent is on the rocket, you're on foot, and the game outright tells you to cheat (with a time-slowing hat) at the race.
  • One of the candle challenges in Death Wish is to complete Train Rush without jumping at all. A feat so absurd that it borders on insanity, since Train Rush is a platform-heavy level that is also a Timed Mission. Beating this challenge requires knowledge of a particular exploit, speedrun tactics, and even violation of platforming common sense. And worse, the only checkpoint in this level is just before the tricky platforming section on the train rooftops, so if you die just short of the end or accidentally press the jump button, you're going all the way back to that section and doing it all over again.
  • Any Death Wish challenge requiring the One-Hit Hero badge. Every one of these involves either a Death Course or a Boss Battle. The first one of these available to set the bar is an EX boss.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The third floor of Queen Vanessa's manor was Dummied Out from the final game, which disappointed some fans.
  • The fact that the Banjo-Kazooie style Voice Grunting is an 800 Pon Badge that you have to equip was disliked, due to the fact it was an option you could simply toggle in the alpha and beta builds.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Mustache Girl, in spite of being the main antagonist of the game, only has a major presence for the first and final chapters of the game. This was lamented, as many a player consider her an interesting character, and there was disappointment she didn't appear in Arctic Cruise or Nyakuza Metro.
  • Many people found Queen Vanessa to be an interesting character with an amazing dark backstory, and were disappointed that she's only relevant to one mission. She isn't so much as mentioned anywhere else, besides being the focus of the story found in the purple time rift.
  • Downplayed with Bow Kid. No information about her is given in game, and even Word of God has said pretty much nothing about her besides her name and some bits about her development process. Many people who hoped for at least some hints as to who she was in-universe were very disappointed, but also not surprised, as her sole purpose in the game is to be a character for Player 2 to control.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • A good number of players wish the original ending that would have happened if you choose to give a Time Piece to Mustache Girl, where Hat Kid grows up into Hat Adult, was included in the game. As it stands, choosing one or the other impacts nothing.
  • The climax of Chapter 6 has you commandeer the ship and steer it into an iceberg for the sole purpose of getting a Time Piece. However, no one on the ship finds out about this, which could have made for an interesting boss fight against the Captain and the crew once they found out you crashed the ship. The level itself is also full of missed potential, with the act ending and the ship being destroyed only three levels into it.
  • Chapter 6 features almost all of the recurring characters from previous worlds in the game (barring Mustache Girl, DJ Grooves, and the Alpine Skyline goats), but there is little to no interaction between characters from different chapters; the Conductor spends most of his time getting drunk at the bar, Snatcher's appearance amounts purely to an Easter Egg and the Mafia and Nomads are mostly there for exposition or humorous fluff.
  • Unlike previous chapters that had a Storybook focused on that chapter's major character, Chapter 7's Storybook is instead about Rumbi, showing their perspective of Hat Kid's various adventures. While cute, it's disappointing we don't get to see what sort of Dark and Troubled Past landed Empress as the head of the Nyakuza.
• Toy Ship: It's not too uncommon to see the kids get shipped with each other, most notably, Hat Kid/Mustache Girl, Hat Kid/Bow Kid and Hat Kid/Timmy.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Hat Kid is shown to have the ability to swim in water, complete with a drowning meter. However, outside of Mafia Town and Arctic Cruise, there are very few opportunities to swim in the game and none of the missions require you to swim at all, not even in the couple of missions that use water.
  • The scooter is only used for one mission in the game and remains largely an optional ability otherwise.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?:
  • While most of the game is fairly cheery, it has an exceptionally dark sense of humor that permeates the entire game. The game also shows a rather startling amount of casual violence (for example, Mustache Girl's seminar shows a jar full of blood and other organs), and things like the "Queen Vanessa's Manor" level are legitimately frightening. As a result, the Switch release re-rated the game from E10+ to T.
  • The various nooses you can hookshot in the forest are ESPECIALLY bad for this. They cheerily talk about how you can use them to get a lift whenever you'd like! And that it's been so, so long since they've been wrapped around a nice neck... and Hat Kid sure has a smooth, slender one... there's even a Subcon villager HANGING from a noose of his own and TWITCHING nonstop near one of them.
• Win Back the Crowd: Seal The Deal was heavily divisive over its Chapter and Death Wish game mode, to the point there was some wonder if the second DLC would live up to the base game. While Nyakuza Metro is considered to still have some issues (its short length and lack of a boss fight against the Empress), it got a more positive response due to its more ambitious world, emphasis on exploration, and adding a number of great new features (most especially the Online Party).

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