Hat Dash Strategy and Mechanics 🏃‍♂️🦄🎩

Question

Accessing Hat Dash

The Hat Dash game can be accessed two ways:

To earn the privilege to play the game, wear one of the mask hats on any site. After some time, you should receive a Winter Bash notification that you have earned the privilege to play the game.

If you don't have the privilege yet, you can input the Konami Code on the Winter Bash homepage by pressing the following sequence of keys: ↑↑↓↓←→←→BAEnter. Your scores will be recorded, but they will not be displayed on the Hat Dash leaderboard.

Controls

To jump, press space or ↑. If your device has touch controls, you can press the touchscreen to jump.

To duck, press ↓. This reduces the size of your unicorn. If you duck while jumping, you will drop faster than normal.

Leaderboard

The leaderboard is cached for up to 5 minutes and shows the following stats:

• Overall Stats
  • Top Scores
  • Most Time Spent Playing
• Today's Stats
  • Top Scores
  • Most Time Spent Playing

The leaderboard has anti cheat measures and cheated scores will be purged.

Strategy and Mechanics

Post your tips for getting legitimate high scores on the leaderboard or for understanding the mechanics as an answer below!

If you have discovered any methods to cheat at the game, please post them in Do you see a way to cheat at Hat Dash? instead.

Answer 1

Multiple Obstacles at High Speeds

When the speed gets high enough, obstacles will start coming very quickly. A common way to end the game is when you jump over one obstacle, but you hit the next obstacle before landing.

You can avoid this by jumping really early with the goal of landing just after the obstacle. This can be tricky though, as if the unicorn's tail touches an obstacle, you lose.

You can also avoid this by pressing ↓ partway through a jump. You will fall very quickly and can jump again right after touching the ground. Note that you can't jump while the ducking, so you'll want to quickly release ↓ after touching the ground.

Answer 2

Touchscreen Device makes Game Easier

When playing on a touchscreen enabled device, you don't have any method to duck. To get around this, the game seems to reconfigure the flying down arrows to never be so low that you need to duck. This means that when playing on a touch enabled device, you are never forced to jump over a flying down arrow and can confidently walk underneath all of them.

Touchscreen Loophole

If you're using a tablet with a keyboard, you can be in this easier game configuration while still using the keyboard controls.

If you scroll your window down or cover the top half of the game with a piece of paper so that you don't see the flying down arrows anymore, you can just focus on the hat obstacles. This way, you don't accidentally try to jump over any flying down arrows.

Answer 3

Adding to @kylejrp's answer...

If you play Hat Dash on a touch screen, remember to flip your phone horizontally

When playing on a phone vertically like > 📱, it's hard to see what's in front of you.

When playing horizontally, you can see much more things in front of you, it's much easier than playing vertically.

Answer 4

Since a jump is either ended once max height is reached or when spacebar/up arrow is released, it's good to adapt accordingly based on your speed.

• If it's low, then you should release the key only after the max height is reached so that the jump will last longer. This is useful when you come across some big piles of hats at the beginning of the game.

• If it's high, then press space/up arrow and release it immediately to make a short jump and avoid losing by hitting an obstacle before landing (alternative of kylejrp's answer).