Remember, hatman is beta, so you shouldn't be surprised if a lot of it seems extremely unfinished. The interface is currently not the greatest, and the game seems to start and finish quite quickly, among other problems (including the occasional seg-fault). Remember, however, it gets better - trust us!
If hatman is installed and in your path then just type hatman to run
it. To see a list of options you can pass, use hatman -h.
The title screen will show while it is loaded and then the menu will appear. You can move around the menu using the arrow keys or a mouse. Some of the options don't work just yet, though. Basically, you want to select "play" and then anyy of the options that comes up on the games menu.
This will drop you straight into the game; feel free to use the arrow keys to move around. You have three lives, and you lose a life if you get eaten by a ghost. If you eat all the little dots on a level, you go onto the next level (if we've bothered including any). At the edge of the screen there may be passageways apparently going nowhere - if you follow one you will wrap all the way around and appear at the other side of the screen, yes - really, as if by magic you have been transported from one side of the screen to the other, and the ghosts won't know what's hit 'em. Also, every now and then some fruit might appear at the edge of the screen. Being a healthy-eating sort of guy, hatman loves fruit, so you should go and eat it - it's extra points, you know.
But the icing on the cake is the power-pellets. Eat one of these and the tables are turned. The ghosts turn gray (as one does, when one is scared) and now it's your turn to do some serious getting. Whilst the ghosts remain gray you can eat them - getting more points for each one you eat, once you eat them their eyes (hatman doesn't like the eyes - they give him indigestion) run back to the ghost's base and gets a new body. Don't worry about them turning back too suddenly - you will get a bit of a warning first.
It's easy, and it's great fun.