In Compulsion Games’ We Happy Few, things are not as they seem. Throughout the game’s years of development, this statement has been true of both its narrative environment — the fictional, sinister English town of Wellington Wells in which people take a drug called Joy to forget their problems — and of the game itself.
The title has gone through numerous transformations since it was announced as a roguelike survival game at PAX East 2015, and those who played it during its tenure in early access found that there was a gap between what the game was and what they wanted it to be. Fortunately, Compulsion heeded the fan feedback, and what has emerged is an adventure game with a compelling, disturbing narrative and a clear commitment to character development.
The game is set in an alternate version of ‘60’s England. Expect jaunty, jangling melodies reminiscent of ‘60s English pop bands like The Kinks and The Zombies along with a swirling, vivid, psychedelic color palette.
This is what the citizens of Wellington Wells experience when they take a drug called Joy, during which they don unsettling white masks that sport permanent grins. Underneath their unusually cheery demeanor, however, are dark secrets and troubled pasts.
Just how much of this grim underbelly is visible to a player, however, depends on a particular mechanic in the game. “We Happy Few’s Joy mechanic shakes up the way players experience the world in a way that no other game does,” Alex Epstein, We Happy Few’s narrative director said. “It allows the player to perceive the streets, their actions, their conversations, and much more differently depending on the amount of Joy they’ve taken.”
During the game, players embody one of three different characters: Arthur Hastings, a government censor whom Epstein describes as an “everyman”; Sally Boyle, a brilliant chemist and Wellington Wells’ “It Girl”; and Ollie Starkey, a former soldier and mad Scotsman whose only companion is an invisible friend.
Each of these three characters presents players with different sets of mechanics and methods of solving problems or engaging in combat. “We wanted to make the characters not just unique in visual design but also in playstyles and motivation,” Epstein said. For instance, a playthrough as Sally might be more focused on stealth and exploiting conformity in crowds, while a playthrough as Ollie might feel more pugilistic.
We Happy Few’s unique, peculiar setting was a culmination of various ideas that different team members at Compulsion brought to the table during development. “Groovy ‘60s England is not a common setting for many games out today,” Epstein said. “What happened was the studio head, Guillaume Provost, wanted a dystopia with Happy Face masks and hallucinatory drugs. Whitney Clayton, our amazing art director, wanted to avoid the usual sad, grey Orwellian nightmare, so she set it in 1964 England. I retro-engineered the story from there: If they’re wearing masks and taking drugs, they’re probably trying to forget something. If it’s England in 1964, that’s probably World War II. Everything else grew out of that.”
The narrative backdrop was what caught so many people’s attention at E3 2016, where Compulsion first revealed the game’s story and characters. However, when the game entered Early Access, Compulsion found that players had expected something different from the procedurally generated survival game they had made available. “Players were mostly interested in the story and the lore and less about the survival mechanics, so we decided to rework them completely,” Epstein said.
Based on players’ feedback, Compulsion repositioned We Happy Few more decidedly as an action-adventure game and even reimagined their quest system to better serve the story. “The survival mechanics and procedural generation are still a part of this game — we just redesigned them so that they don’t take away from the narrative-based action-adventure gameplay,” Epstein explained.
We Happy Few’s story is shaping up to be just as compelling and disturbing as its fans have always hoped it would be. Epstein warned that We Happy Few routinely employs one narrative device in particular — the unreliable narrator. “Don’t trust the characters. They’re all liars,” he noted. “There’s a conceit in video games that everyone tells the truth except the villain — that’s not the case here. You shouldn’t trust what anyone says just because they said it.”
Epstein alluded to the possibility that this might become more obvious as players go through varying playthroughs with each of the characters. “You might see the same scene from several different perspectives,” he said. “The dialogue might change. The location might change, depending on who’s remembering. The second version isn’t necessarily the truth just because it comes second.”
That’s all he would say on the matter. Anyone who wants to know more will have to play the game, which is out now.