Disclaimer: Please do not report issues or bugs you encounter in-game while using DXVK to Gears for Breakfast, as it's not officially supported by them.

Hey! If you experience performance issues in-game, there is way to fix that with an open source project called DXVK[github.com].
To summarize, it translates Direct3D 9, an outdated high level graphics API from Microsoft that's exclusive to Windows (what A Hat in Time uses), to Vulkan, a universal and open low level graphics API that is not tied to any OS or type of device. Originally, DXVK was developed to make Windows games run faster on Linux, but it turned out that it improves performance on Windows too!
By rough estimates, in some cases, it can boost FPS by 50% or even more!

To use DXVK, you have to meet certain requirements first:
1) Your graphics card has to support Vullkan 1.3:
For more information on that, you can check this Wikipedia page[en.wikipedia.org]
2) Your drivers need to be up-to-date:
Note: do not use drivers that laptop vendors have on their websites, as they often only provide very outdated ones.

To be absolutely sure that your machine supports Vulkan, you can use this very simple test program:
World's Smallest Vulkan Compatability Test[github.com]
If the test is successful, you should see a little message that says something like this:


Note: DXVK targets primarily Linux graphics drivers, so in some cases, it may not work as well or as fast on Windows. If you are feeling adventurous, you can try the game on Linux. For beginners, I recommend using Pop!_OS.

Installation of DXVK for use with A Hat in Time is extremely easy!

1. First, you need to download DXVK from its release page [github.com]. Pick the latest version, and then download it by clicking on a file with .tar.gz extension
   
2. What you've just downloaded is a TAR archive, and you need to extract it. You might need a third party archive extraction tool for that, like 7-Zip [www.7-zip.org].
   
3. After you've successfully extracted it, open output directory and find x64 folder. From inside of it, copy a file named d3d9.dll . Then, you have to move that file into the same directory as game's EXE file. For me, it was located in
   C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/HatinTime/Binaries/Win64.
   For you, the destination may vary a bit, but the end folder should always be Win64, which is exactly where you need to place d3d9.dll.

And that's it! Now you just need to launch the game and see what happens.
If you've done everything right, after you launch the game, a file named `HatinTimeGame_d3d9.log` should appear near the game's executable and d3d9.dll file you've copied. If it did not and the game started just as usual, it means DXVK is not actually being used.
And if the game did not start at all, it means that you missed some information in the previous section about requirements and that either your graphics card is unsupported or your driver is too old.

In case DXVK is causing issues for you, removal of DXVK is very simple - you just need to delete d3d9.dll out of the game folder.

The game may stutter slightly at first when loading new locations (due to shader conversion), but after that it should run just fine.
It should be mentioned that there is no guarantee that it will actually improve your performance. Mainly, the improvements come from the fact that for some reason, DXVK is less CPU-intensive than native D3D9. So in some cases, usually when you are limited not by your CPU (processor) but by GPU (graphics card) or in other situations, you might not see any improvements whatsoever, or even get worse performance.
In addition to that, this project might actually bring more issues than benefits. For example, on some machines that only have Intel graphics and not a lot of RAM, a Hat in Time might start crashing on loading screens due to lack of memory, as DXVK uses a bit more RAM than native D3D9.
Also, if you have outdated drivers, it might introduce graphical glitches:

I hope this guide was useful to some you and actually improved performance in A Hat in Time without introducing any issues.
If you have some time, please share your comparisons of native D3D9 vs. DXVK with some specific numbers in the comments, that kind of data is very useful ❤️