We Happy Few
AN ODE TO JOY
$89.95 | PC, PS4, Xbox One | compulsiongames.com
A MIX OF style and its sixties setting gives We Happy Few something unique. As the story unravels there’s a good amount of depth to it, and is perhaps the key reason to give We Happy Few a shot. There’s a quality to it, too, with authentically British dialogue and voice acting, that could have all too easily fallen apart.
The crux of the plot revolves around the hallucinogenic drug Joy, a literal happy pill that keeps the populace in a constant state of euphoria — and as a result placated and malleable. It’s all a little BraveNewWorld, but it’s a dystopian idea that is rarely explored within videogames. But Joy is more than just a plot device: since the town’s inhabitants have become so culturally reliant on the drug, anyone who doesn’t partake is chastised and even, ultimately, run out of town.
Therein is the major driver of the gameplay, where you’ll need to interact with the world in an subordinate manner: walk, don’t run; wear the right clothes; keep that smile up. It’s about balancing the Joy dependency, which — when taken — gives the world a visual glow and helps calm those otherwise hypersensitive NPCs. However, it can be something of a nuisance. The withdrawal effects are debilitating, for example, and will be a surefire giveaway that you’re a ‘Downer’, leading you to have to spend an awkward amount of time hiding from sight until the withdrawal symptoms have worn off.
Things aren’t helped much by the fact that the game becomes little more than one long fetch quest, into and out of the town. It’s a sandbox game in nature, an open-world environment, but one that doesn’t really have much in the way of player involvement. It is a setting, not a playspace, in part because playing in such a space would only draw attention in this society of conformity and rules.