We Happy Few is a game I have followed with great interest since its Kickstarter days. Described as a procedurally-generated roguelike, We Happy Few is a game chiefly concerned with survival. The player may expect to die many, many times before mastering the stealth tactics required to make their way through a town filled with hypervigilant drug addicts.
The game takes place in the fictional city of Wellington Wells, where each type of inhabitant is aroused to suspicion by different behaviors or visual indicators. For example, a proper suit helps the player pass among the “better sort” of people, while those who are more rough on their luck may find you more acceptable in a torn suit.
The demo for We Happy Few starts the player off in the role of Arthur Hastings, who has the task of redacting the town’s newspapers. He has a choice very early on: take his Joy pills, which will repress the unpleasant memories and unhappy emotions straining to come to the surface after he reads an article about his brother, or refuse to take his Joy pills and see and feel the truth.
Refusing to take them is a big problem. The inhabitants of Wellington Wells call such people “Downers” and go after them viciously, with policemen and clubs. Without Joy, Arthur sees the world for what it really is. A pinata is revealed to be nothing more than a dead rat, and the candy scrounged from it is nothing more than meat. Joy’s a hell of a drug, Arthur.
During the opening introduction sequence, we get some hints at the depths of dystopian hell into which we’ve plunged. One coworker’s office has an abandoned fruit basket, littered with bugs, and a wall decorated with photos of a summer vacation from which she never returned. Another coworker has snitched on you anonymously, revealing an Orwellian world of constant personal surveillance even by friends and colleagues. The quest interface is seamless and smooth, easy to check. But why is everyone on Joy? What is this alternate history of England hiding?
Arthur escapes to an underground safehouse, where you have the opportunity to do a little exploring and some crafting. Crafting and resource management is a major part of the game, inspired by survival games like Don’t Starve. You’ll need to manage your fatigue, hunger, thirst and health carefully. Arthur’s got to take his naps, and there aren’t very many safe places to do it. I found myself running out into bedraggled semi-wilderness, avoiding the shining flashlights of the cops out looking for me, ransacking a few ruined houses, chatting with a few sad-faced half-sane Downers and running back into my safehouse to manage my inventory. The inventory is pretty smart -- larger items take up more slots than smaller ones, and small items can stack. A bit of Tetris is involved in getting everything to fit.
As a result of my caution, I was one of few players who didn’t die during my demo, but I missed out on combat as a result. Considering We Happy Few is crafted to kill you, I’m sure I’ll get my chance to die at the hands of a crazed Wellie sooner or later. The demo was a delight, with clean and easily understandable UI, bright colors and the promise of a mad, mad world to explore, made anew every time through the power of procedural generation.
We Happy Few comes to Xbox Game Preview on July 26, with a focus on soliciting feedback for gameplay mechanics and avoiding too many narrative spoilers. Based on what I saw at E3 2016, it’ll be a whole lot of fun even in early access.
