The Roulette is a game mechanic found within A Hat in Time, which serves as a slot machine minigame which can be played to claim various prizes. These prizes are mostly aesthetic changes, ranging from alternative styles for Hats, Color palettes to change the color of Hat Kid's clothing and Music remixes that can be swapped out in the Machine Room and played at anytime by requesting from the Express Owls located there.
Hat variants and Color pallets can come in a variety of rarities, ranging from one to three stars. Music remixes are always the same rarity.
There is two ways to play the Roulette:
- One way is it can be found in the Spaceship. At first it is blocked by some boxes. The only way to clear the path to the Roulette is to destroys those boxes with the ability of the Brewing Hat. The player can play the Roulette by collecting three Tokens in the general game and expending them here.
- Keep in mind that without any DLC installed; any Relics collected after the first 12 become Rift Tokens. Using the Radar Hat Mod, you can tell if a Rift Token is actually a leftover Relic.
- If only DLC 1 is installed and active, it's after 16 Relics.
- If only DLC 2 is installed and active, it's after 14 Relics.
- If DLC 1 & 2 are installed and active, it's after 18 Relics.
- Keep in mind that without any DLC installed; any Relics collected after the first 12 become Rift Tokens. Using the Radar Hat Mod, you can tell if a Rift Token is actually a leftover Relic.
- The second way is as a reward when you finish Time Rift stages.
As of the second DLC; there are 35 Customization Rewards inside the Rift Roulette: 17 Hat Flairs, 11 Color Palettes, 7 Music Remixes; not counting any Mod additions. 4 Hat Flairs were added in an update before the first DLC was released; 1 Sprint, 1 Ice and 2 Time Stop Hat Flairs. You need 35 Roulette Spins to get them all.
By purchasing only the first DLC however, only 34 chances at the roulette can happen. The player must gain 2 Rift Tokens from Mods in order to acquire all the items in the game. By purchasing both DLC 1 & 2, a total of 5 Tokens will remain in the player's inventory as long as the spins from finishing Rifts are used before using all Tokens. As of now, you still need to collect 1 more Rift Token from Mods to get another Roulette spin.
However on PC, sometime during the period before DLC 2's release but after DLC 1's release; there were 2 Rift Tokens temporarily added in the Mail Room of Hat Kid's Ship. This was to allow for an additional spin of the roulette to be made to obtain the last remaining roulette customization reward without requiring the Rift Tokens or the Purple Rift found within DLC 2. However, these were removed from the PC version sometime before DLC 2 released as it was intended via PC Mod-Exclusive Achievements & the Steam Workshop to complete Mod levels of which any Mod Time Piece obtained would become a Mod Rift Token, which can be used in the Rift Roulette for additional spins. It should be noted that console versions (any console that is running the latest PC build which is compatible with both DLC) still retain these 2 additional Rift Tokens for an unknown reason, as there are enough Rift Tokens without these to obtain all customization rewards from the Rift Roulette with both DLC 1 & 2 installed. Since Mod Time Pieces become Mod Rift Tokens (30 of these would give you a PC Mod-Exclusive Achievement & a 3rd completion star on your file), you effectively have infinite Rift Tokens on the PC version via the Steam Workshop.
| Roulette Opportunities | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Time Rift (11) | Purple Time Rift (7) | Token (59) / Relic (18) Locations | ||
| Hat Kid's Spaceship | 2 | 1 (DLC 1 - once all other Time Pieces are collected) | 1
(+2 on any console version that has DLC available) | |
| Chapter 1: Mafia Town | 2 | 1 | 16 | |
| Chapter 2: Battle of the Birds | 2 | 1 | 7 | |
| Chapter 3: Subcon Forest | 2 | 1 | 18 | |
| Chapter 4: Alpine Skyline | 2 | 1 | 11 | |
| Chapter 5: Time's End | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Chapter 6: Arctic Cruise (DLC 1) | 1 | 1 | 16 | |
| Death Wish: Community Rift: Twilight Travels Community Rift (DLC 1) | - | - | 1 | |
| Chapter 7: Nyakuza Metro(DLC 2) | 0 | 1 | 6 | |
Trivia:
- With DLC 1 & 2 installed and Active, and you have collected all Rift Tokens & Relics throughout; if you complete all Rifts first, you will have 5 Rift Tokens leftover. This would result in 1 more Roulette Spin due to each spin requiring 3 Rift Tokens BUT there would be nothing left to spin for.
- If you spend all your Rift Tokens before completing all the Rifts, you will have 2 Rift Tokens leftover since the last Rift you complete will not give you a Roulette Spin since there would be nothing left.
- There is a single Rift Token within the Twilight Travels Community Rift. As it is within Death Wish, which means you must go through Hard-as-Peck stages in order to access this Rift. It's in a Chest behind the Bell in the 2nd sublevel, and the Map Badge will detect it. This is easy to miss if a player isn't a fan of the high difficulty of the Death Wishes.
- The 3 Community Rifts (including Twilight Travels) within Death Wish act as Purple Time Rifts since they contain Story Pages that tell a story after completion and require Rift Pons to progress; but as they are in Death Wish they do not give a Roulette Spin upon completion.
- Despite this additional Rift Token; with only DLC 1 installed & active, you will be 2 Rift Tokens away from another Roulette Spin IF you have all Relics and Rift Tokens from the Main Game & Arctic Cruise.
- With DLC 1 & 2 installed & active; this difficult-to-access Rift Token (due to being inside a Death Wish) is still not necessary to collect, as there are 3 Relics and 3 Rift Tokens in Nyakuza Metro, where if you have collected all Relics and Rift Tokens in the Main Game & both DLC 1 & 2, you will be 1 Rift Token away from a Roulette Spin.