Hatris

Hatris is a Tetris-style puzzle game that seems kinda boring at first but gets far more interesting at higher levels. Hats drop in pairs and the goal is to stack similar types to clear the area. As the levels increase, so does the styles of hats. Movement is limited to swapping their horizontal position, but as soon as one hat is stacked it disconnects from the other, so creating higher stacks can help break up pairs. At the end of each level, you can buy helpers to remove a certain type of hats from the screen, but this is totally non-intuitive and I didn’t realize it was a feature until I actively searched to figure out what the heck the shop was about.

There is not a lot to say about this beyond you either dig hat dropping games or you don’t. I whip this one out from time to time, starting at level 0 if I want a chill experience or starting at higher level if I want a bit more intensity. There are several ports of this game but the NES version has a certain charm, with two little dudes on a conveyor belt dropping hats onto the heads of people standing below.