A Hat in Time is a quirky and colorful game inspired by 3D platformers of the 90s.  Most of the game is bright and goofy…and then there’s one chapter that turns this otherwise cute game into pure nightmare fuel.  Queen Vanessa’s Manor, which somehow manages to be one of the scariest gaming experiences of my life.  Think I’m exaggerating, are you?  Well, keep reading and find out.  What, are you scared?  Because you should be…

Taking place in act 4 of Subcon Forest, Hat Kid must travel way out beyond the edges of the forest through icy terrain.  Along the way, you encounter the ruins of old buildings, which is pretty eerie in its own right.  Eventually, the manor will appear ahead of you through the icy fog, a towering structure that might offer a respite from the cold, but which simultaneously doesn’t feel too welcoming.  Seeing as the front door is locked, you’ll need to go around back and enter through the basement, which I can’t help but feel also doubles as a dungeon, due to the chains and shackles hanging from the wall in the back.  I thought basements just typically housed the furnace and old Christmas decorations…

Well, due to that contract you signed with Snatcher, you aren’t allowed to use your hats here, so you’ll be rather defenseless for your entire visit.  Not that it matters, as no amount of headwear is going to motivate me to approach the manor’s owner.  You see, after finding the key in the basement and using it to enter the main house, it’s not long before you disturb Queen Vanessa herself, a dark and spectral, hunched figure with glowing red eyes.  And let me tell you, she does not take kindly to visitors, immediately jumpscaring the player and causing the normally spunky Hat Kid to scramble backwards in terror!

Throughout your entire visit to the manor, Vanessa will respond to any noise you make and immediately come looking for you.  (And the game forces you to make noise multiple times as you solve puzzles and locate keys.)  Whenever she sees you, the whole place gets dark and a loud drone plays, leaving you with two options.  Flee.  Or hide.  The entire level is tense as you sneak quietly around, and you can even see Vanessa’s shadow through the walls as she passes by, her whispered voice drifting through the manor’s lonely hallways, letting you know she’s always around and always looking for her unwanted guest.

Along the way, you’ll also discover diary entries and letters that tell the story of Vanessa, the prince, and some deadly jealousy on her part.  (She’s even jealous over his love of bacon, that’s how deranged this woman is!)  There are also frozen people throughout the manor, no doubt some of her many victims, and an eerie nursery with scratched wallpaper and a previously faceless painting that eventually forms a creepy grinning visage with red features.  Which kind of resembles Hat Kid, weirdly enough…  At one point, you’re even forced to enter the bathroom while Vanessa is taking a shower (oh yeah, and there’s bloody writing on the mirror reading, “My prince has gone”) in order to lure out so you can get the key on the far side of the room.

The whole vibes in this place is so creepily well done, from the quieter ambient drone when you’re alone and currently unobserved to the snow blowing outside the windows, leaving you with a sense of isolated loneliness.  But nothing quite gets me like the loud drone whenever Vanessa sees you, which I think would be called a Shepard tone, a sound that feels like it’s getting higher and higher without actually doing so.  These sounds are terrifying not just because they sound like an alarm going off, but because they make one feel as if we are being pursued and overload our brains, which expect a rising noise to eventually reach a peak, leaving us deeply unsettled when the sound continues to rise endlessly.

I haven’t played a lot of horror games, I’ll admit.  But when I have, it’s often that the horror elements fall flat and don’t quite get under my skin as much as I might want them to.  And that’s why it’s so interesting how a cute platformer like A Hat in Time can contain one of the most terrifying and tense sequences in any game I’ve ever played.  Sure, there are some amusing elements, like Vanessa’s over the top obsession with her prince and how the game forces you to use a balloon to get one of the keys, which you just know is going to inevitably pop and alert her to your presence.  But as much as such details try to lighten the mood, I’d say the frightening still manages to outweigh the funny.  Queen Vanessa, I think you’ve moved from merely spoopy to pure, unadulterated nightmare fuel.

All screenshots from the game’s official Steam page