Pursuit of Hat: The cutest self-dismemberment game I’ve ever seen

There’s no denying it: Pursuit of Hat is strange.

It’s an adorable platformer where you just want to find your stylish hat, and you’re completely willing to rip off your own limbs to get to it. Because you don’t need your arms, legs, or torso to wear a hat.

Duh.

It sounds a lot more violent than it really is. You’re just one strange bloodless creature and who loves his hat. It’s surreal, and it plays pretty well to boot.

It’s hard to do “cute” in a flash game without going overboard and limiting who your game appeals to. Games are that too cute will mostly appeal to children and young women, while those that are on the fringe of adorable and veer more into charming can be appealing to most demographics. Pursuit of Hat is in that second category. The drawings of what you’re supposed to do instead of instructions only aids in its charm, as does the seemingly hand-drawn character sprite and his limbless forms.

The game focuses more on figuring out what to do than on platforming. You need to figure out where and when to toss your limbs to open up the path to the coveted hat. Figuring out what to do takes much more time than getting there. In this way, Pursuit of Hat is a sort of puzzle platformer. You’re doing more thinking than jumping, and the parts you’re platforming through generally aren’t difficult — though finding your way can be difficult in itself.

The puzzles you meet in each level are mostly focused around determining the order you need to press the switches in, and how to do so. Every level is different enough to keep things interesting, and the difficulty scales very well as you progress. There are no big jumps in difficulty, and you’re not going to be doing the exact same thing twice from one level to the next.

Though most people prefer straight platforming games these days, there is still a place for puzzle platformers and their ilk. It’s great to see that the genre is thriving via flash games. Pursuit of Hat is just challenging enough to be fun, and is endearing enough to be appealing. There’s nothing like biting your own torso off to fit into a tunnel just so you can wear a hat.