We Happy Few is an action-adventure, survival horror video game developed by Compulsion Games, and published by Gearbox Publishing. In 2016, an early access version was released for Microsoft Windows, with the full game seeing wide release on PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in August 2018.
Played from a first-person perspective, the game combines role-playing, survival, and light roguelike elements. Taking place within the mid-1960s, following an alternative version of World War II, players take control over one of three characters, each of whom seek to complete a personal task while escaping the fictional city of Wellington Wells – a crumbling dystopia on the verge of societal collapse, due to the overuse of a hallucinogenic drug that keeps its inhabitants blissfully unaware about the truth of their world, while leaving them easily manipulated and lacking morals.
The developers focused on creating a story with strong narratives, while underlining gameplay with a sense of paranoia, and designing in-game decisions that are of moral gray areas and weight, which influence and affect later parts of the game. Design of the game's setting was based on various elements of 1960s British culture, with the devloper, Compulsion Games, seeking inspiration on dystopian societies from various influences in the media, such as Brazil, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and heavily on the trilogy MaddAddam. Work on the game began with a Kickstarter funding campaign in 2015, before the developers were acquired by Microsoft Studios in 2018, supporting the developers to work on a version for the Xbox One.
It received mixed reception upon release, with praise mostly focusing on its themes, story and characters, while being criticized for its gameplay mechanics, perceived repetitiveness, and various technical issues.
Gameplay
We Happy Few is an action game played from the first-person perspective that includes elements of stealth and survival games. Players control one of three characters in the game's three different acts, each having their own skills and abilities, and their own reasons for escaping the village of Wellington Wells. There is Arthur Hastings, a well-balanced character adept at crafting weapons; Sally Boyle, adept at sneaking and crafting chemical concoctions; and Ollie Starkey, a strong melee fighter adept at crafting powerful explosives.
The game uses procedural generation to create the layouts of some parts of the game world at the start of each playthrough. Each Act presents the player with a main story goal, with a series of main quests to follow, but several optional side quests can also be completed to gain additional rewards. Completing objectives can earn the player-character rewards as well as skill points which the player can allocate among a skill tree to improve the character's attributes or give them new abilities.
Throughout the game, the player can collect melee weapons, items, food and drink, and wealth. Items are used to craft various tools to help progress in the world or medication, like lockpicks or healing salves. Food is used to maintain nourishment or thirst; staying nourished improves certain character attributes, while being hungry or thirsty can negatively impact these attributes. The player also must make sure the character gets rest to also maintain these attributes. The player is able to gain access to safe houses for recovery as well as to fast travel between other unlocked safe houses. Wealth can be used or gained through various vendors in exchange for items.
A core element of We Happy Few is Joy, an addictive hallucinogenic drug used by most of the citizens of Wellington Wells. If the player opts to have their character use Joy, they will see the town in a colorful, joyful environment, and will be able to walk through the town without attracting undue attention from its citizens, but this does impair some of the character's abilities. As their Joy depletes, the town will revert to its dismal, war-torn state, and while the character will have full control of their abilities, they will be seen as a "downer", an enemy of Wellington Wells, and either must fight off the "Wellies" police force through melee, or use stealth to sneak around the town; furthermore, the player-character will suffer withdrawal effects from coming off Joy, impacting their health and thirst. Should the player-character take too much damage from enemies or the environment, they will have to restart at a recent checkpoint. Optionally, the game allows the player to enable permadeath, requiring them to restart the game should the player-character die. The player also must consider the type of residents in each district within Wellington Wells and make sure they also do not stand out due to clothing or other appearance aspects. Residents of a wealthy district may become suspicious of the player-character if they are dressed in rags, even if they have taken their Joy.
Plot
Setting
The game takes place in an alternate historical timeline, in which the United States never joined the Allied Forces, leaving the United Kingdom to defend itself from the German forces alone. The Battle of Britain was lost, allowing the Germans to occupy the entire country. Most of the volunteer forces of the Home Guard became complicit in helping the Germans, with only a few attempting to resist.
At some point during the occupation, the population of the island town of Wellington Wells did what is initially only alluded to as a "Very Bad Thing" that caused the Germans to voluntarily leave their island, allowing the British citizens there to live free. However, the repercussions of the Very Bad Thing left the citizens with immense anguish and guilt over their actions, leading to the invention of a new hallucinogenic drug called "Joy", which suppresses all unhappy memories and leaves its user in a chemically-induced euphoria, while also brightening how they perceive their environment. However, its many negative side-effects include addiction, short-term memory loss, loss of appetite, nightmarish hallucinations, and being susceptible to manipulation.
By the 1960s, Wellington Wells' isolation led to resounding advances in technology, including Tesla-styled weapons, portable power cells, and automated security systems. Its inhabitants—referred to as "Wellies"—wear white "Happy Face" masks, which were created for the purpose of forcefully molding the wearer's cheekbones into a smile, so that the wearer compulsively smiles as a result. Joy is freely dispensed in pill form and is also laced into the city's water supply. To encourage the drug's consumption, the media is tightly controlled and centers on "Uncle" Jack Worthing, a friendly MC whose voice and image widely broadcasts government propaganda over the city's televisions and radios.
Unfortunately, some Wellies developed an immunity to Joy—partly as a result of ingesting bad batches of the drug—and subsequently became depressed or insane from remembering the Very Bad Thing; these people were then driven out of Wellington Wells and came to be known as "Wastrels". Others who voluntarily refuse their Joy are known as "Downers" and seen as a threat; if caught, Downers are either force-fed Joy, are taken to a Joy Doctor to get a potentially lethal liquid injection of Joy, or are outright killed on the spot. As a result, Wellington Wells has become a dystopian police state on the verge of collapse.
