It’s perhaps a small thing, but check out what happens at the start of each level in Pursuit of Hat.
At the beginning of every level, the character and the hat go through a little attention-getting animation routine. It quickly answers the question “Where am I?” and “What do I need to get?” I’ve played plenty of less-polished games where for every new level I had to spend a moment searching for my character or his goal, that I know this kind of thing helps out a lot.