Hatamari is a game about increasing your social status by collecting hats! It was created in 48 hours for the 2014 Global Games Jam by myself, Oliver Knott, Alistair Lynn, Sam Phippen and Simon Porter under the theme “You don’t see things as they are, you see them as you are”.

The rules of hat etiquette are forever changing. Make sure you keep up with the trends by swapping and stealing hats from the other guests. Stack your hats high and be the talk of the town! Bump into guests with more hats to get a hat from them, or those with the same amount to swap your highest stacked hat. Beware, guests with fewer hats will steal yours if they touch you!

We ran with the theme in a social context in that better clothes makes you seem like you’re more successful in life. What’s a fun and colorful way of depicting this? With hats! We initially had a variety of hats but prototyping showed us that they didn’t look great all stacked on top of each other. So we stuck with the good old top hat. We gave the game a cutesy art style as we felt this matched well with the premise of the game.

The player has to swap and steal hats from other guests to complete their hat combo shown at the top of the screen. If they succeed, they’re given a round of applause and a boost to their score. A new hat combo must then be obtained to keep up with the latest fashions, and not fall behind. With Simon Porter lending his musical talents to the team, we were able to give the game a classy soundtrack with custom background chatter discussing hats and the rising price of gin and tonic.

You can play Hatamari online: Here

Controls: WASD /Arrow keys = Move. Spacebar = Drop one hat