Mr. Sun’s Hatbox Review: Delivered With a Vengeance

I first got the chance to play Mr. Sun’s Hatbox at PAX West. As a fan of the indie side of things, including publisher Raw Fury, I was eager to see what the then-mystery game was all about. And though I had some issues with the keyboard and mouse setup for the PC build I demoed, I could see the game had potential. Fast forward a few months later, and now I finally got a chance to sit down with the Switch version of Mr. Sun’s Hatbox. While there are definitely aspects of the final game I found charming, ultimately, it wasn’t a great example of the genre.

They Take That Guarantee Seriously!

Let’s touch on the good stuff first. The game is infused with a ton of deranged humor, right from the very opening moments. Mr. Sun’s delivery gets stolen by some masked goons. Instead of throwing hands in the air, the deliveryman hunts after the criminals like an enraged Liam Neeson in the Taken series. After all, Mr. Sun was guaranteed his delivery, so you’ll make sure he gets it – by any means necessary!

Sneaky Sneaky…

Here the game introduces the basics. While Mr. Sun’s Hatbox is indeed a roguelike platformer, it’s also very much a stealth game. Which I instantly had mixed feelings about. When done really well, I feel the stealth genre can be fulfilling and draw you into a zen frame of mind. However, when it’s done poorly, it makes me want to yell and smash things. And though the stealth isn’t necessarily bad in Mr. Sun’s Hatbox, it is everywhere. Every level has cameras, alarms, turrets, and all sorts of traps to trip you up. While you can, of course, take your time and evade detection, it’s far from easy. A big reason for that is the game’s other constant – the quirks.

Quirky Doesn’t Begin To Cover It

See, even though your armed militia of deliverymen is highly motivated, they’re not superhuman. In fact, almost every character in the game is basically just an enlarged head and spindly little limbs. To help bring their failings into even sharper focus, every single character on your team has quirks. Most of them are detrimental. Things like panicking when you’re detected, fainting when snapping necks, being so photogenic that cameras can see you through walls, or having bones so brittle that you’ll go flying when hit by objects. Hilarious, sure. Helpful, not so much. The good news is you can grow out of your quirks if you can level characters up by completing missions. The bad news? If any character dies, they’re gone for good. Yes, Mr. Sun’s Hatbox has permadeath.

The only thing that helps that bitter pill go down a bit smoother is that you can, and will, enlist tons of new characters. You can kidnap foes and brainwash them back at your base. To bring them home, you either drag their unconscious bulk through the exit or use a handy balloon to ferry them back. You can even go to the Black Market and hire random mercenaries. But regardless of how you find new allies, there’s a guaranteed chance they’ll have lots of negative quirks. Oftentimes so many that they can barely walk in a straight line without spontaneously combusting. Though it’s possible to grow out of quirks by leveling up, there’s no guarantee new quirks will be all that helpful. One example is a quirk that made it so one character walked slower unless moving backwards, which made them slow to a pathetic crawl.

Build Back Better

The bulk of the game is split between building and upgrading facilities back at your base (helpfully located under poor Mr. Sun’s shop) and going on missions. You’ll be able to send more useless units to research or expand features, and with every day that goes by, you’ll make a little more progress. Keep in mind these activities require manpower as well as cold, hard cash. Weirdly enough, research often requires random items as well, such as soup pots or boomerangs.

Into the Unknown

Missions begin when you scan the world map, and you’ll be given several options. You’re totally free to take the safer, easier missions, but to progress, you’ll need to find map pieces to unlock Hat Heist missions. These are essentially the game’s boss battles, and require maneuvering through crowded fields of maniacs to find magical hats. Though they don’t provide any new platforming abilities, they do open up more stuff you can do in-game, such as unlocking Support and Sales at your home base, and much more besides. Basically, it’s a pretty effective loop of doing more missions to unlock the capacity to do even more.

All the Hats

Given the title of the game, you’re probably wondering about hats. And yes, there are TONS of them in Mr. Sun’s Hatbox. Many of them can protect you from damage. Others, like a gun mounted on your head, can be used to attack foes. Then there’s the weird stuff, like mirrors that deflect bullets, boxing gloves, pointy urchins, and much more. Though I enjoyed the variety, I didn’t find the hats all that game-changing and felt they were mostly put in there to satisfy our expectations.

Chore of a Delivery

Right now, it probably doesn’t sound all that bad, my dislike of the stealth focus aside. But I, unfortunately, ran into a persistent issue that made Mr. Sun’s Hatbox a chore. One of the first things I did in the game was build a Showroom for my fancy magical hats. Which is why it was weird when the game suddenly told me I needed to build it again. Worse, it wouldn’t let me do anything else until I did so. Luckily, quitting to the home screen and booting the game up again did let me get past this. The bad thing is, it kept happening without warning and is still doing so several hours into the experience.

Another smaller, more irritating issue is when I beat a stage, walking through the exit, and it suddenly froze on me. Or another time, I fully beat a level, only to encounter the Showroom glitch. When I returned to the game, I found my progress beating that level was gone, and I had also lost a bunch of really powerful level-ups for a character. Also, though the controls on Switch are better, they’re still not great. I repeatedly kept pressing what I thought should have been the jump button, but which instead was the button to toss my equipped item aside.

Despite the problems I encountered in the game, it’s still delightfully quirky and features colorful, silly artwork. All the characters look like refugees from Fraggle Rock or Sesame Street, despite the very violent things they’re regularly doing. The music is also pretty solid, albeit not all that exciting. But both the art and music do a good job of meshing with the demented sense of humor, which I appreciated.

Return to Sender

I had hoped I would find another amazing roguelite in Mr. Sun’s Hatbox. But between the hardcore stealth component and the persistent glitches I encountered, I found the game more of a chore than a delight. While there are plenty of folks that may still enjoy the game, it’s a much harder sell until those nagging issues are patched out.

Final Verdict: 3/5

Available on: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PS4, Xbox One, PC; Publisher: Raw Fury; Developer: Kenny Sun; Players: 1-4 (local); Released: April 20, 2023; ESRB: T for Teen – Blood, Violence, Crude Humor; MSRP: $14.99

Editor’s note: The publisher provided a review copy to Hey Poor Player.