Mr. Sun’s Hatbox brings meaning to the fact that a good hat can make a world of difference when you need to deliver a package.
Kenny Sun is a lone developer within a very big world, but he’s been at it for well over a decade. Like many small game development studios or even lone developers, they all start small, and Kenny Sun is no exception. Based on his history, he started with the old Flash games that most of us know and love, then started moving to small indie time-waster games for mobile. Though there is a clear trend for minimalist puzzle-style games. His games took a slightly different turn with the release of Tender: Creature Comforts in 2021, a narrative-driven game based on the popular dating app Tinder, but instead with aliens.
Tender: Creature Comforts, unfortunately, didn’t gain much traction but his latest release, Mr. Sun’s Hatbox might shine a much-needed spotlight on his career. Mr. Sun’s Hatbox is a fun pixel art-based platformer with an oddly satisfying charm; while there isn’t much on the story front, the gameplay is definitely addictive. Kenny Sun definitely maintained his original trend of simple but fun games though.
Mr. Sun’s Hatbox starts off with a really quick introduction showing one of your many possible staff working for ‘Amazin’, a delivery company, delivering a package to Mr. Sun. Everything goes well until a group of thugs decides to steal the package from him. The delivery company swore they would retrieve his package since he signed up for the Delivery Guarantee insurance policy. After that, things escalate slightly for Mr. Sun as the basement under his hat shop becomes a base of operations for a heist syndicate.
This is where you come in, and you’ll have to expand the base of operations and hopefully retrieve Mr. Sun’s package no matter the cost. To do this, you’ll need to hire new staff to work for you and subjugate captured enemy staff through brainwashing. But you’ll need a lot more than just a few staff to complete this task.
Your first task is to build your base of operations but to do this, you’ll need gold bars, mountains of gold bars. This is the only currency in Mr. Sun’s Hatbox; while the initial costs seem low and easy to reach, the prices of everything climb as you progress. In this game, you’ll have a total of 12 blocks to use as you please, but there are a total of 14 rooms you can build. You’ll eventually get to a point where you have to decide which rooms are more important to you, though this depends on your playstyle.
Something you’ll come to see right from the start is that your staff have quirks. Quirks can be positive, neutral or negative, and staff tends to have a mix leaning more towards negative quirks. Just to name a few negative quirks – Clouded Vision, which makes everything dark, and Spindly Arms, which is the inability to snap necks. Positive quirks can make a huge difference as well, like Deadly Throw, which will cause the items you throw to damage instead of just stun your enemies. Neutral quirks are similar to racial traits like armored for Knights, who are protected from being stunned or damaged by blunt objects.
Quirks play the biggest role in Mr. Sun’s Hatbox, as you’ll have to find common ground with what you can handle and how patient you can be. Negative quirks don’t last forever, though. As you level up a staff member, it will outgrow negative quirks sometimes. While other times it can gain a new positive quirk. Unfortunately, you can’t get too attached to one specific character because if they die on a mission, they’re dead permanently.
You’ll need to have several staff members on hand that you favor over the rest, mostly for the sake of having a backup member to use on missions if one dies but also if one gets kidnapped. Yes, your staff members can be kidnapped, and this typically applies to the staff members you use most often. You’ll need to go on a special mission to retrieve them, but dying on those missions does mean you’ll end up losing 2 staff members.
If you’re struggling with quirks or need to change things up, the lab is your best friend. Naturally, for a price, you can ‘Extract’ or ‘Instill’ quirks to your heart’s delight to build that perfect staff member. However, it is recommended to have more than one decent staff member so you’ll need to be careful with whom you take on missions.
Going out on missions is relatively straightforward. When you’re ready to head out on a mission, you can scan for missions, and you’ll typically have a choice between two normal missions and a story mission. Normal missions are good for when you need to get more gold bars, kidnap new prospective staff, get more weapons for your armory, or get new hats for future use. However, story missions, if you can complete them successfully, will award you with a map piece that’ll lead you to a Magic Hat. The Magics Hats unlock new rooms to build and sometimes give you a choice between two major buffs for your staff or base of operations.
While officially in a mission, the game looks like a simple 2D platformer where you jump from ledge to ledge and shoot down enemies. This would become really boring after a while though… This is where the hats come in. Aside from the sometimes whacky weapons, hats are your biggest benefit but also the most interesting mechanic in Mr. Sun’s Hatbox. Hats tend to come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors, literally.
While some hats don’t look like they serve a purpose, you do get some of the more whacky hats, like a piece of road that makes you immune to being jumped on or the Diagonal Boxing Glove that will punch any enemy off you. There’s even a frog hat that will literally catch and eat enemies in range, though it will also eat you. The hats serve a second purpose, and they keep you from being stunned when an enemy jumps on you. Your hat will go flying, but you don’t have to deal with being stunned, at least.
Each room in Mr. Sun’s Hatbox serves a unique purpose that will be essential to progress. One of the more important rooms you’ll need is a Brig. Enemies you kidnapped can be brainwashed into working for you in the Brig, and it’s a lot cheaper than buying new staff. However, if you have the gold bars to spend, then the Market room is your best bet. Buying staff costs a lot more, but you’ll have better options on quirks and levels.
Mr. Sun’s Hatbox would start losing that interesting edge if there wasn’t some way to slightly change up the gameplay mechanics. This is where the Research room comes in. You’ll need gold bars, hats, and weapons to pay for the research, but the rewards are well worth it. You’ll have options like reducing healing time or being able to ride ballooned hats for an easy escape, and so much more. This is also what gives Mr. Sun’s Hatbox such an outlandish charm that just keeps you coming back for more.
Your most important tool in Mr. Sun’s Hatbox would be balloons. It sounds silly, but instead of having an inventory to take weapons, hats, and people with you. You’ll have to use balloons to capture any gear you want to send back to the base. Unfortunately, you are limited on how many balloons you can take per mission, so you’ll need to decide what’s more important, even more so if there are multiple floors to go through.
Most of the rooms in Mr. Sun’s Hatbox have a unique purpose that can really help you in the long run, and nothing is ever easy. For your rooms to operate, you’ll need to assign staff to them, or they won’t function at all or reach higher levels. As an example, the Research room works similarly to a skill tree. Raising the room level gives you access to researching more passives, but to do that, you’ll need to assign higher-level staff to that room or upgrade it.
Mr. Sun’s Hatbox looks like a simple pixel art game, but it has so much to offer. While the color palette is more aimed toward bright and friendly colors, there is an obscene amount of glow around certain objects that make the game a little hard on the eyes when combined with the current colors. Aside from the glow issue, Mr. Sun’s Hatbox is actually incredibly detailed for a pixel art game, and there is a clear attention to detail while keeping it simple.
When you’re preparing for a mission back at your base of operations, the music is somewhat relaxed and does fit the theme of what you’re doing. However, if you’re taking a bit longer than expected, that same song becomes really repetitive. Though each mission you go on does have its own background music to fit the theme, almost as if each song was made for that specific area type. The same can be said for the base, but the repetitive music can drag things out.
Overall, Mr. Sun’s Hatbox is a great pixel art game that proves looks can be deceiving. The game has a lot of charm, potential, and great gameplay; these three aspects combined into one game are a rarity. If we take into account the multiplayer side of the game as well, it’s a good game for hardcore players who want something more relaxed or a casual group of friends needing a laugh while going out on heists. The only downside of Mr. Sun’s Hatbox is the repetitive music.
