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Mr. Sun's Hatbox

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Mr. Sun's Hatbox Game Cover
87%Game Brain Score
Most mentioned positive aspects:story, gameplay
Most mentioned negative aspects:grinding, replayability
87% User Score Based on 240 reviews

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Nintendo SwitchPCMac OSSteam DeckWindows
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Mr. Sun's Hatbox Game Cover

About Mr. Sun's Hatbox

Mr. Sun's Hatbox is a single player and multiplayer tactical role playing shooter game with a comedy theme. It was developed by Kenny Sun and was released on April 20, 2023. It received positive reviews from players.

Mr. Sun’s Hatbox is a slapstick, roguelite platformer about getting the job done, no matter the cost. Upgrade your HQ, your team, and your tools so you can take on increasingly dangerous (and ridiculous) missions in pursuit of not only the hat you’ve lost, but as many hats as you can handle.

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Mr. Sun's Hatbox screenshot
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Mr. Sun's Hatbox screenshot
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Reviews

87%Audience ScoreBased on 240 reviews
story17 positive mentions
grinding4 negative mentions
  • Innovative blend of 2D platforming, stealth, and XCOM-like base management with a compelling metaprogression loop.
  • Addictive and fun gameplay with variety in mission approaches (stealth, combat, mixed) and quirky, humorous tone.
  • Strong replayability aided by randomized missions, unique character traits, diverse hats/weapons, and engaging co-op play.
  • Difficulty and permadeath can feel punishing and unfair, with chaotic combat and random deaths causing frustration.
  • UI and base management can be cumbersome and unintuitive, making personnel and equipment handling less user-friendly.
  • Some players report technical issues like slowdown, bugs, and control clunkiness, which affect the overall experience.

  • story

    93 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    18% positive mentions, 79% neutral mentions, 3% negative mentions

    The story in Mr. Sun’s Hatbox is lighthearted and humorous, serving as a charming backdrop to the gameplay rather than a deeply immersive narrative. Centered around recovering a stolen hatbox, the plot unfolds through diverse, often unpredictable missions that blend tactical strategy with roguelite elements and base management. While the story is brief and not the main focus, its witty dialogue and quirky character traits add enjoyable flavor to the challenging mission-driven experience.

    • “Released in 2023, the game revolves around the quest to recover a stolen hatbox, but it quickly evolves into a series of diverse and unpredictable missions that challenge players’ reflexes, planning skills, and adaptability.”
    • “The story is genuinely entertaining with funny dialogue and easter eggs all over the place.”
    • “You start by setting up a base of operations, a mission control panel, staff room, storage, medbay and brig to brainwash people you kidnap into joining your cause. Missions are scanned in the world, and their difficulty level and objectives vary widely, including killing a target, kidnapping, surviving raids, delivering or stealing packages. Permadeath is on by default, so be careful, and upon completing missions your workers gain experience and rewards.”
    • “The final mission is also cheap as it's 16 levels, when all levels have been 1-4 levels, so it feels like unnecessary and cheap forcing you to die and grind more for upgrades first.”
    • “I'll go ahead and recommend this, as it's pretty fun, however the skill ceiling really gets ramped up damn fast - if you lose your leveled staff, you'll have a tough time replacing them. There doesn't seem to be any opportunity to do easier missions; you're stuck doing really difficult objectives with staff that are challenged at every turn - they can't kill, shoot, run, stun etc. Essentially the game heavily penalizes you when you fail, then continues to make it even more difficult when you retry.”
    • “The demo is better than its full release in my opinion, two words, too punishing (for me at least), experimenting with weapons and hats would sometimes lead to death. If you earn all parts of the map then fail to get the crown, you lose a map part and have to do another randomly generated mission before retrying the crown mission, which is kind of unforgiving.”

  • gameplay

    71 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    30% positive mentions, 66% neutral mentions, 4% negative mentions

    The gameplay of Mr. Sun's Hatbox offers an addictive, quirky mix of stealth, action, and base-building mechanics inspired by Metal Gear Solid V, blending roguelite platforming with strategic resource management. While the core loop is enjoyable and rewarding, especially in early stages and cooperative play, some find the combat frenetic, controls clunky, and progression limited by repetitive or overly simple mechanics that can lead to frustration. Overall, its unique humor, dynamic gameplay twists, and charming presentation create a distinct but occasionally uneven experience.

    • “While it’s a very different experience, it clearly shows that Kenny Sun knows how to craft enjoyable and addictive gameplay loops.”
    • “Its combination of quirky humor, imaginative world design, and dynamic gameplay makes it a standout entry in the indie platformer space, offering both charm and challenge in equal measure.”
    • “The developers absolutely nailed the core gameplay loop.”
    • “After ~10 hours, I had mastered the gameplay, and things began to become a bit stale, as unfortunately the simplicity of the gameplay also gives it little depth.”
    • “A decent roguelite platformer let down by its core gameplay loop and frenetic, frustrating combat.”
    • “The gameplay is almost solid, unfortunately, too many things can go wrong; jumping can trigger a dozen horrible reactions that will doom you extremely easily, and some levels you can go to are simply too much of a gamble for no more reward than the more straightforward ones.”

  • humor

    29 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    100% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 0% negative mentions

    The game's humor is widely praised for its quirky, absurdist, and playful style, blending slapstick comedy with witty dialogue and unexpected interactions that enhance both charm and immersion. Its comedic elements, ranging from funny story moments to hilarious gameplay mishaps, create a lighthearted and entertaining experience that balances challenge with laughs, making it enjoyable solo or in co-op.

    • “Its combination of quirky humor, imaginative world design, and dynamic gameplay makes it a standout entry in the indie platformer space, offering both charm and challenge in equal measure.”
    • “The story is genuinely entertaining with funny dialogue and easter eggs all over the place.”
    • “Controls are solid, and there are many hilarious ways your weapons, enemies, and hats interact with each other.”

  • graphics

    14 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    29% positive mentions, 50% neutral mentions, 21% negative mentions

    The game features a charming and whimsical pixel-art style with smooth animations and detailed levels that enhance immersion. Its clear visuals maintain readability even during chaotic, fast-paced gameplay, blending nostalgia with a playful, imaginative aesthetic. Overall, the graphics complement the humorous and dynamic gameplay, creating an engaging and visually appealing experience.

    • “Visually, Mr. Sun’s Hatbox stands out with its whimsical pixel-art style.”
    • “Smooth animations and carefully crafted level details enhance the sense of immersion, while the pixelated aesthetic evokes a nostalgic feel without compromising clarity or readability during fast-paced gameplay sequences.”
    • “Despite the crude pixel graphics, it's quite charming and hard to stop playing.”
    • “Usually very clear visuals, but can get chaotic at times, similar to Spelunky.”
    • “An underappreciated game with more depth than its visuals and surprisingly low recognition would suggest.”

  • music

    9 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    67% positive mentions, 22% neutral mentions, 11% negative mentions

    The music is widely praised for being energetic, adaptable, and enhancing gameplay with a chill, poppy, and fun atmosphere. While generally enjoyable and unobtrusive, some players found certain game mechanics that alter audio or visual effects disorienting and occasionally uncomfortable. Overall, the soundtrack is regarded as a standout feature that complements the game's humor and pace.

    • “The energetic soundtrack adapts to the pacing of the gameplay, intensifying during action sequences and becoming more subdued during stealth segments.”
    • “Addictive and humorous gameplay, excellent music, charming art style, funny little story.”
    • “Accompanied by the wonderful sfx of the entire world & the music, it's simply spectacular.”
    • “The biggest issue I have with the game is how certain character traits affect your real-life senses, such as night vision turning the screen green, frequent blinking causing dark flashes, or items that manipulate game noise and music. These effects are very disorienting and annoying, to the extent that they made me feel sick several times while playing.”

  • grinding

    4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    0% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 100% negative mentions

    Grinding in the game is slow and can feel frustrating, especially when leveling up characters to make them effective for heists. While some enjoy farming missions for gold, the progression pace and character downsides make extended grinding feel tedious, though significant grinding isn't essential to complete the game.

    • “It has the bones of something good, but everything around those bones is grindy and frustrating.”
    • “I understand the point is that you level up a specific set of characters and then they become your super good guys for the heists and such, but leveling up doesn't happen rapidly enough for that to come into play. Most characters I got had so many downsides that it would take far too long grinding with them to make them worthwhile and worth preventing from dying.”
    • “Although I appreciate that a lot of grinding isn't necessary to beat the game.”

  • atmosphere

    2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    100% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 0% negative mentions

    The game's atmosphere is enhanced by minimal voice acting that gives key characters distinct personalities, complemented by humor that boosts immersion and creates a whimsical, engaging experience.

    • “Minimal voice acting adds personality to key characters, further reinforcing the game’s whimsical and engaging atmosphere.”
    • “The humor adds to the atmosphere and immersion.”

  • replayability

    2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    50% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 50% negative mentions

    Replayability is considered a major strength of Mr. Sun’s Hatbox, offering engaging experiences. However, single-player replayability can feel limited unless full stealth is emphasized, as the gameplay tends toward chaotic action rather than strategic emergence.

    • “Replayability is a major strength of Mr. Sun’s Hatbox.”
    • “Somewhat limited single-player replayability as, unless you're doing full stealth, it's more about chaos than emergence (another argument for Heat Signature's "pause to plan" feature).”

  • optimization

    2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    50% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 50% negative mentions

    The game offers engaging long-term goals through its base-building and upgrade system, encouraging strategic play, but suffers from poor optimization, with significant slowdowns occurring during alarm events even on modest hardware.

    • “The base-building and upgrade system adds long-term goals, motivating players to revisit missions to improve performance and experiment with new strategies.”
    • “Terrible optimization, game gets extremely slow every time the alarm goes off (like really!!!?????? in a 16-bit game??).”

  • emotional

    1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    100% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 0% negative mentions

    The game’s attempt to add emotional and sensory effects through character traits can be disorienting and uncomfortable, causing negative physical reactions like dizziness or nausea for some players. These features, intended as quirky, may detract from the overall experience by making gameplay upsetting rather than engaging.

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Play Times

10h Median play time
9h Average play time
8-10h Spent by most gamers
*Based on 2 analyzed playthroughs
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Frequently Asked Questions

Mr. Sun's Hatbox is a tactical role playing shooter game with comedy theme. Common tags for Mr. Sun's Hatbox include indie, roguelite, 2d, exploration, story rich and others.

Mr. Sun's Hatbox is available on Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac OS, Steam Deck and others.

On average players spend around 9 hours playing Mr. Sun's Hatbox.

Mr. Sun's Hatbox was released on April 20, 2023.

Mr. Sun's Hatbox was developed by Kenny Sun.

Mr. Sun's Hatbox has received positive reviews from players. Most players liked Mr. Sun's Hatbox for its story but disliked it for its grinding.

Mr. Sun's Hatbox is a single player game with multiplayer and local co-op support.

Similar games include Voidigo, Streets of Rogue, Metal Unit, Nobody Saves the World, Patch Quest and others.