So, you brought Hatfall! Good choice by the way, it's a rather good game. But it's quite hard, so you might be lost as to how to play, or maybe you played the web version and you're trying to find the new content. Or you might just be trying to get all the achievements, whatever the case, you'll find it all in this guide.

The controls and goals in Hatfall are simple, summed up by two of the captions that appear before the countdown starts: "Press left to go left, Press right to go right" "Catch the hat to win, Miss the hat to lose".

So, what's preventing you from your hat catching quest? Only one way to know...

Yahtzee:
"You know what, maybe I don't need to be so afraid of people all the time. Maybe it's people who need to be afraid of me!"

The man in the sweet hat with the big balls, the man, nay, the legend that started this entire series in the first place.

Also, you.


















ZP Person:
"I'm not a fanboy - (yes you are!)"

He always wanted to be a game critic, but he never had the guts to put on a hat and grab a microphone. Now that the Hatfall has occurred, he's found the perfect opportunity to prove his worth and claim the throne. Too bad he frequently dives under TV's getting chucked out of windows.

















Imp:
"ERR REH RERR"

The ZP depiction of the evils imps from The Darkness review (Yahtzee's first review, before he joined The Escapist!). They enjoy dressing up, annoying Yahtzee, mating, and eating Pedigree Chum, and are also by far the most merchandised of all ZP.

















The Wizard:
"Tomorrow you will antagonize your loved one and widdle on their future prospects."

This arcane artist was perfectly content with burning down villages and summoning demons until YOU showed up. But there you go, stealing his hat, and giving him no other choice other than to curse you with the most vile of spells. He may seem like a annoyance at first, but he'll become very helpful in the finale. So buy him a beer and try to keep your kleptomania under control.

















???:
We don't really know much about this girl, she just wanders up occasionally and asks if we've seen WEIRDO-kun. We tend to just shrug and walk off.
















???:
I don't know about you, but this guy seems off. I hear he's going to create a cult, probably best to just ignore him and keep collecting hats.

Obstacles

Poles:
(Come in two variants: Telegraph Pole and Street Sign)
The shadows of these objects usually stay around the same size as the hat until the last second, after which they will start becoming very narrow quickly.















Small Objects:

(Come in two variants: TV and Anvil)
The shadows of these objects stay around the hat size but shrink quickly, giving a indicator that they are a fakeout.









Large Objects:

(Come in two variants: Car and Fridge)
The shadows of these objects are usually incredibly big and shrink relatively slowly until near the end of the countdown, after which they start shrinking very quickly.















So, now that we know what we're up against, time to start catching some hats!

• If you are using a small or pixelated monitor, move as close as you can without physically merging with your desk.
  
• There is a small pause button on the top left portion of the screen. Clicking it or pressing escape will pause the game. You can go to the toilet now.
  
• The main challenge of the game comes from figuring out who you are, the A.I. often move in the same direction you go, but they have a short delay, so rapidly tapping a direction can help.
  
• Imps often go under the fakeout shadows, and will stay away if you are under one, use this as a warning sign.
  
• Learn to use your movement sparingly. All characters in Hatfall move very quickly if you hold down the key, so controlling your speed is a must.
  
• If you are in doubt of who you are controlling, move as many generic characters under the hat as possible.
  
• The hat only registers as caught if you are touching the bottom or it's rim, so be sure you are centered underneath the shadow to avoid missing it.
  
• Do not use the mouse to control Yahtzee, the mouse support is very poorly done and is highly imprecise, use the left and right/A and D keys or a arrowed numberpad instead.
  
• Hatfall is a hard game by design. But studying A.I. patterns, getting timing down, learning how to tell shadows and NPC's apart, along with good old fashioned experience will help a lot. Don't get discouraged if you lose early on, just keep at it and you'll get the hang of it.

The Wizard is, as Yahtzee puts it: "added to throw curveballs at players who start to get the hang of things". At around Hat 6, he'll appear and curse you for a single level. Overcoming his curse will get you a Wizard Boon, which allows you to redeem random prizes after you lose. Multiple Wizard Boons net you more chances to get a good prize, so it's worth your energy to survive the wizard. But for new players, the wizard can be by far the most difficult thing in the game. So let's break down each curse:

• Blood Rain:
  This is the most challenging of the curses, as the blood is very slippery and can easily send you offcourse, use small, quick taps of the keys to get near the shadow, then tap in the opposite direction to counteract the slipperiness.
  
  
• Upside Down
  This curse may look intimidating, but it's easily beaten. When this curse takes effect, the controls reversed, but the A.I. doesn't adjust for this, so pressing the opposite direction and seeing who moves in that direction will immediately show who you're controlling. After that, it's as simple as getting under the shadow and letting nature take it's course.
  
  
• Imp Invasion
  This curse is relatively simple, just look a bit harder and it's no different than a normal level.
  
  
• Earthquake
  This curse shakes the screen and moves idle characters, so just get under the shadow and readjust when shaken.

After surviving a curse, The Wizard calms down and give you a Wizard Boon, which can be used after losing. There are 3 cards presented on screen, face down, that all contain random rewards, with one dud card in the deck.

There are a total of 7 cards:

• The Fool: As the name suggests: "It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal, YOU GET, NOTHING, YOU LOSE, GOOD DAY SIR."
  
• The Hierophant: gets you 10 bonus hats, which add to your currency hats and total hats.
  
• The Wheel of Fortune: gets you 50 bonus hats, which add to your currency hats and total hats.
  
• The Tower: Grants you a Hat multiplier, which affects your score, remaining hats to the next gift, currency hats, and total hats. But won't affect how long it will take for The Wizard to appear or how long it takes for a gift to take effect.
  
• The Hanged Man: Gives you an extra life, which is used when you miss a hat, giving you another chance to catch the hat.
  
• The Magician: The first hat you catch will be a Wizard Hat, which gives you a chance to get a Wizard Boon early in the game and heightens the chance of getting double and triple Wizard Boons.
  
• The Chariot: Gives you a gift after the card is found and resets your remaining hats to 25. If you already have a gift or you got the same card twice due to a double Wizard Boon this effect won't stack.

But what are the gifts? And what do they do? Guess you're gonna have to scroll down...

Every time you catch a hat, a bar fills up slowly, with 25 hats filling the bar completely, after the bar is filled, the next hat will have a gift attached to it. After losing, you will be brought to the gift selection screen, where you can choose from 15 gifts ranging from helpful to downright useless:

• Satellite Hat Targeting: Tells you what is a hat and what is not after it falls.
  Usefulness: None, it only tells you when it's already fallen.
  
  
• Survival mode: Shows thirst and hunger bars, after around 15 hats, they will reach maximum and the Management/Hunting minigame will start.
  Usefulness: Some, it takes a while for the minigame to trigger and the minigame doesn't pay out well, but it's necessary for getting the "The fun never stops" achievement. And is one of the rocket part locations.
  
  
• Swear jar from a parallel universe: Replaces text shown in between levels with censored swears.
  Usefulness: None, it replaces normal text, which means you could miss out on some jokes.
  
  
• Nodding dog: Cosmetic Item.
  
  
• Picture of a horse: Cosmetic item until the Picture of a lady horse is brought, then triggers the Wedding Party minigame after 3 hats.
  Usefulness: Some, It takes two items to activate, and doesn't pay out well in hats, but it's necessary for getting the "The fun never stops" achievement. And is one of the rocket part locations.
  
  
• A tire: Cosmetic Item until Another Tire is brought, then triggers the Hill Race minigame.
  Usefulness: Useful, While requiring the second tire to be brought and paying out poorly in hats. It's necessary for getting the "The fun never stops" and "Well Read" achivements. And is one of the rocket part locations, along with being necessary for beating the game.
  
  
• Hat-sassin's Creed: Triggers the Dating Sim minigame.
  Usefulness: Useful, Not only does it pay out well in hats, but is also the most fleshed out minigame. And is the easiest way to grab rocket parts.
  
  
• Solid gold desk: Triggers the Insurance Form minigame after 3 or 4 hats.
  Usefulness: Some, It pays out reasonably well in hats, but is short and somewhat uninteresting, it's also required for the "The fun never stops" achievement.
  
  
• Rose-tinted glasses: Makes the screen a tint of pink.
  Usefulness: None, unless you happen to like pink.
  
  
• A gun that shoots beards: Mainly Cosmetic, puts beards on dead animals in the Management/Hunting minigame.
  Usefulness: None.
  
  
• The emperor's new upgrade: Has no effect. FOR NOW.
  
  
• Another tire: Unlocked after the first tire is brought, triggers the Hill Race minigame.
  Usefulness: Useful, While requiring the first tire to be brought and paying out poorly in hats, it's necessary for getting the "The fun never stops" and "Well Read" achievements. And is one of the rocket part locations, along with being necessary for beating the game.
  
  
• Picture of a lady horse: Cosmetic item until the Picture of a horse is brought, then triggers the Wedding Party minigame after 3 hats.
  Usefulness: Some, It takes two items to activate, and doesn't pay out well in hats, but it's necessary for getting the "The fun never stops" achievement. And is one of the rocket part locations.
  
  
• Back patter: Replaces the text in between levels with positive messages, encouragement and compliments.
  Usefulness: Some, it's way better than the normal messages. And has unique dialogue for the Praise Rondo segment.
  
  
• Thing with numbers on it: Adds a gray box around the numbers on the desk.
  Usefulness: None, the numbers already show on the desk regardless. However, this is more than likely due to a layering bug and was meant to be required. Sorry, Yahtz! :/

If you purchase a special item, a minigame will trigger, these are usually there to add jokes and pay out in bonus hats.

• Dating Sim
  The Dating Sim minigame is a choose your adventure style minigame done to resemble Japanese dating sims/visual novels. It involves playing as a high school student (named either LOSER-kun, WEIRDO-kun, or TOSSPOT-kun.) going on a date with Hat-Chan. Below is a flowchart illustrating the different paths you can take, and their pay off:
  
  
  
  
• Management/Hunting
  The first half of the minigame involves hunting for bears and bunnies that will wander around. Left clicking fires the gun. After shooting a lot of animals, a bear dressed in a business shirt will appear, shooting this bear triggers a Animal Crossing esque dialogue box, before transferring to the second portion.
  The second half involves managing the funds (Pinecones) of a animal run company, there is no "right" choice, as every choice has a chance of being good or bad, making your decision of little value. Eventually, the game will force you to embezzle everything and run. The conversion rate is usually 140-180 Pinecones to 1 Hat.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Insurance Form
  This minigame involves answering questions on a insurance form, there are 4 questions, with the most innocent answer being correct. In between questions Yahtzee will drink from a whiskey bottle and get drunk, making it harder to aim the pen. After answering 3 questions and signing the form, you'll receive a letter telling you how many hats you'll receive, and how many questions you correctly answered. The total amount of earnable hats is 60.
  
  
• Hill Race:
  This minigame involves racing down a hill attempting to catch hats, making contact between the net and the hat will register the catch. Catching a Imp will temporarily block the net and deflect any hat that hits it. Eventually you'll hit a giant Imp and go flying into space. You have to use the mouse to "drag" Yahtzee towards his hat, you also have to wait until the hat has rotated so that the rim is facing down onto Yahtzee's head before it'll register.
  
  
• Engagement Party:
  This minigame involves Yahtzee attempting to get out of a boring party while being ambushed by people he doesn't want to talk to. Eating a canape will restore your special points, but one of the canapes will attempt to attack you. Each enemy has a special weakness, like flirting with someone's girlfriend, or hurling abuse at the dork, if you lose all your health you'll only get 10 hats, but reaching the end rewards you with 27.

• Buying alter egos in the shop will reduce the amount of identicals on screen.
  
  
• The shadow of the hat should be the width of Yahtzee before the hat appears on screen, anything bigger or smaller is a fakeout.
  
  
• A risky tactic can be waiting underneath one shadow and waiting until the last couple of frames to see if it's a fakeout, then dashing to catch the hat.
  
  
• If you have a extra life and can't figure out who you're controlling, consider wasting the life and spending the time separating everyone. The play area doesn't reset when the extra life is used so you can start moving to see who you're controlling, and grab the hat.
  
  
• If you're trying to get a high score, getting double wizard boons can be very helpful, in particular the hanged man/tower combo works well.
  
  
• Your Steam leaderboard score is dictated by how many hats you've caught in total during play, not by how many hats you have in your possession.
  
  
• It's possible to chain multiple gifts together by drawing a magician card and a chariot card/having a gift before drawing the card and redeeming the gift (Make sure it's one that requires multiple hats to be caught before being activated, like Survival Mode or the horse pictures.) followed up by passing the wizard, then deliberately failing, drawing another chariot, and redeeming that.

So, you've collected a full deck of wizard cards in one go, boned Hat-Chan silly, and amassed a small army of Imp alter egos, what's left to do?

There's one final challenge in Hatfall, which is activated by collecting 1500 total hats. A recommended way to collect all 1500 is to grind the Dating Sim minigame by achieving the Kidney Selling/Rudolf Hess/Cute Couple ending multiple times. When you've collected all 1500, after you lose you'll be treated to a special cutscene, and trigger the final boss...

Well f*ck, guess it's time to embezzle everything and run.

It turns out that while you were out there catching hats and committing insurance fraud, you accidentally summoned the lord of the hats, Rondo, and now he rules the world with a iron fist. With everyone either dead or part of his cult, it's up to Yahtzee and his rag-tag team of minigame sidekicks to save the world, and defeat Rondo.

To stop Rondo, you need to collect all 7 Chaos Emeralds Rocket Parts, which are scattered in some of the minigames. A few things have changed with the minigames, Hat-Chan has been replaced by Rondo-Chan, the party is full of Rondo cultists, the insurance form questions your loyalty to Rondo, and the company has to deal with it's staff not obeying Rondo's wishes. You can find rocket parts in the following places:

• Survival Mode: A bear with a rocket part strapped to it will appear in the bottom left corner for 3 seconds, shooting it will get you the rocket part.
  
• Party: Every now and then a person with a rocket part strapped to their head will appear, defeating the person without using your Fireball skill will grant you a rocket part.
  
• Hill Race: Early in the descent a rocket part will whiz by, catching it in your net gets you a rocket part.
  
• Dating Sim: Hitting the scientist with the rock will get you a rocket part.

The easiest way to get rocket parts is to enter the Dating Sim minigame, then following this path:

Praise>Violently Oppose>Hit the scientist

Repeat this path 7 times and you'll get all the rocket parts, after that, it's time to bring the fight to Rondo.



To fight Rondo, initiate the Hill Climb minigame with all 7 rocket parts. After hitting the giant Imp, you'll end up in Space.
You're in the home stretch! To defeat Rondo you have to dodge the satellites and Imps until you get a high enough speed and fly to the top of the screen. Your desk can sustain multiple hits but hitting a object will send you spiraling out of control for 2 seconds. It takes about 1 minute and 30 seconds to achieve max speed.

So, you've defeated Rondo, saved the world, and got yourself some snazzy headgear in the process, What's next?

While you can just keep playing the game to get a high score, why bother with that when you can get Achievements?

Yes, achievements, those little invisible trophies that keep us up at night. You should have already amassed a large amount of them with this guide, but here's the full list:

• Hat-equate: Collect 10 Hats during normal gameplay.
  
• Hat-vancing: Collect 100 Hats during normal gameplay.
  
• Hat-tacular: Collect 1000 Hats during normal gameplay.
  
• Sleeping On The Job: Catch a hat without moving, this happens purely by chance, just keep restarting the game until you get it.
  
• The Sorcerer’s Annoyance: Catch the Wizard's hat 50 times.
  
• Calm Down Dear: Pass a Wizard's curse 50 times.
  
• Well-Read: In the Hill Climb minigame, float around and avoid the hat until the achievements unlocked.
  
• Identity Crisis: Buy a alter ego.
  
• Wait What: Start a minigame.
  
• The Fun Never Stops: Play all the minigames, including the space race while Rondo is activated.
  
• Fedorable: Go in the following path:
  
  Date>Is that okay>Funfair>Teacups>Teacups>Teacups>Ghost Train>Ghost Train>Go home>Ride the Ferris wheel>Agree>Return the sentiment>...>STICK IT IN
  
  
• No Foreplay: At the start of the Dating Sim, violate Hat-Chan.
  
• Rise Of The Hat Lord: Collect 1500 Hats and activate Rondo
  
• The King Is Dead, Long Live The Hats: Beat the Space Race minigame while Rondo is activated.
  
• Hat-tality: Collect 5000 Hats during normal gameplay.
  
• Stovepipe: Get impaled by an item above 100 times during gameplay.
  
• Flat Cap: Get squashed 100 times by an item above during gameplay.
  
• How To Win Friends And Sacrifice People: Buy all alter egos.

Pat yourself on the back, and drink whiskey until you can't hold a pen.

But, of course. You could just hack the game files and get it over with in time for the refund. While I don't personally approve of this, it can be useful for achievement hunters or people who don't have enough patience to sit through the slog that is grinding hats for Rondo.

If Hatfall is currently running, close it now. Games don't usually like people modding them while they're open. Open up My Computer and go to your Windows user directory, usually C:\Users\[YOUR USERNAME HERE]. Then click on AppData (if you can't see it, go into Control Panel, go into Folder Options, navigate to the View tab and click "Show hidden files, folders and drives") and then click on Local, you should see a folder named "Hatfall". If you don't, it means the game hasn't created the save yet, so play it for a few rounds first and then check again. If it still doesn't show, try reinstalling the game on the drive your user is on. After that, open data.ini with notepad. If all is done correctly, you should see something like this:

[costume]
4="2.000000"
6="2.000000"
8="2.000000"
11="2.000000"
13="2.000000"
15="2.000000"
17="2.000000"
19="2.000000"
18="2.000000"
16="2.000000"
14="2.000000"
9="2.000000"
12="2.000000"
10="2.000000"
7="2.000000"
5="2.000000"
3="2.000000"
[data]
tilupgrade="19.000000"
rondototal="1.000000"
rocketparts="0.000000"
hattotal="1.000000"
topscore="1.000000"

[nextpower]
0="0.000000"
1="0.000000"
2="0.000000"
3="0.000000"
4="0.000000"
5="0.000000"


The [nextpower] value, to my knowledge, is where the game saves it's values for the wizard RNG. I wouldn't mess with this too much, as you could break your save. The [data] value is where it's at. This is what editing the values do:

• topscore: This modifies your high score, as in how many hats you caught in one round. To my knowledge, this does nothing for online leaderboard status or achievements.
  
  
• hattotal: This modifies the amount of hats you have for spending. This can be used to win the "collect x amount of hats during gameplay" achievements by setting it to one less than the achievement requires and then collecting one more hat. It can also be used to gain enough hats to buy every alter-ego.
  
  
• rondototal: This counts how many hats toward Rondo you've collected. Set it to 1499.000000 and collect one more hat to get the achievement and cutscene.
  
  
• rocketparts: This value appears after awakening Rondo. Setting it to 7.000000 will allow you to skip straight to the space chase minigame. Thanks to Blackout for discovering this.
  
  
• tilupgrade: This keeps track of how many hats you need to collect to get a gift. Set it to 1.000000 and collect two more hats for a gift.

There is also a [costume] value. This allows you to get costumes without spending hats. But this will not count towards the alter ego achievements and could break them. The values will be in the order you bought them, but if you add a valid costume value (valid values are listed above) it will be unlocked. The number next to the value is the costumes status: 2 is equipped, 1 is disabled.


You may of noticed that there is also a local_ach_data.ini file. This is tied to your achievements on Steam and modifying it can grant instant achievements.

Keep in mind that the following section is unfinished. If you can figure out what the values that aren't covered do, please leave it in the comments and I'll add it in.

This is the general layout:

[ACH]
ACH_1="119.000000"
ACH_2="119.000000"
ACH_3="119.000000"
ACH_4="119.000000"
ACH_5="3.000000"
ACH_6="2.000000"
ACH_7="5.000000"
ACH_8="10.000000"
ACH_9="5.000000"
ACH_10="0.000000"
ACH_11="1.000000"
ACH_12="1.000000"
ACH_13="6.000000"
ACH_14="0-0-0-1-0-0-0-1-0"
ACH_15="0.000000"
ACH_16="0.000000"
ACH_17="0.000000"
ACH_18="0.000000"

And here's the achievements they correspond to:

• ACH_1 to ACH_4: These values cover each hat collection achievement. Setting them to 9.000000, 99.000000, 999.000000 and 4999.000000 respectively and collecting 1 hat will unlock the achievements. It should be clarified that you should set each value one at a time, due to the way Hatfall processes achievements it can't handle unlocking many achievements at once. (Discovered by Blackout)
  
  
• ACH_5: Unknown, please post results in comments to be added to guide.
  
  
• ACH_6 & ACH_7: These correspond to Stovepipe and Flat cap respectively. Setting both values to 49.000000 and getting hit by a impaling or a squashing object will unlock it's corresponding achievement. (Discovered by Blackout)
  
  
• ACH_8 & ACH_9: These values correspond to the The Sorcerer's Annoyance and Calm Down Dear achievements. Setting them both to 49.000000 and then completing a wizard challenge will unlock both achievements. (Discovered by Blackout)
  
  
• ACH_10 to ACH_18: Unknown, please post results in comments to be added to guide.

December 4 2015: Corrected the thing with numbers on it. (Thanks a distinctive lack of will for the correction!)

May 30 2016: Corrected the thing with numbers on it (again). Created "Dirty Hacker" section. Added trivia for "The thing with numbers on it" entry in the "Gifts" section. (Also, Thank you all so much for 400+ views and 20+ favorites! Here's to the next guide on somewhat obscure new releases on Steam.)

August 9 2016: Edited the hacker section to include incomplete achievement value information and rocketparts value. Thanks to Blackout for the info. Edited some of the opening and Yahtzees quote.