Glad to be dead.
Over the hills and far away... In a world called HEREAFTER... Souls and Zombies need a ruler. Someone to take care of them. Someone to grant their wishes. And they have found that person. IT'S YOU! Welcome to the world beyond, Master!
—The Happy Hereafter opening.
The Happy Hereafter, known as Ghostville in Germany, is a horror-themed casual city-builder co-developed by Alawar Entertainment and Mirball Games for release on October 2, 2013, although some outlets offered it as early as September 25. The Happy Hereafter was originally published by Buka Entertainment, but ESDigital Games took over as publisher in 2022.
In The Happy Hereafter, the player takes the role of the mayor of the developing afterlife settlement of Ghostville, which is located next to the overcrowded Deadtropolis and/or Deadville. The goal is to turn Ghostville into a thriving town where any stiff should be happy to reside. As a casual game, the player works on gaining the materials and managing the building process, but the buildings' locations and looks are set by the game. The Happy Hereafter gives development guidance with building suggestions and requests by NPCs of which up to four can be active at once. The player does not have to follow the order of the requests, but the payment that comes with each fulfilled request does make it easier to start work on the next project.
Alawar had previously made The Promised Land, which is something of a spiritual predecessor to The Happy Hereafter. Nonetheless, between the two The Happy Hereafter is the lesser game because it lacks several strategical elements, balance checks, and Anti-Frustration Features that are present in The Promised Land. There are also a handful of translation oddities and sloppy bugs that suggest that The Happy Hereafter was rushed out of development.
The Happy Hereafter contain examples of:
- Ambiguous Gender: The assistant and the mummy offer no indication as to what gender they are.
- Art Shift: The game itself utilizes a cutesy-cartoony style typical of mobile and web sims. The cutscenes, however, are in a comic book format with thick, sketch-like lines.
- Bag of Sharing: The central storehouse and the five cellars all share the same contents. No stuff needs to be moved between them and invaders can target just the storehouse to loot everything they want.
- Bread and Circuses: The undead toil ceaselessly for the good of Ghostville until their happiness reaches 0%. At that low, they'll wander off in search of food and won't stop until they've stuffed themselves either with stored food or berries growing in the wild. Alternatively, their happiness can be restored individually with magic or communally by hosting shows in the circus. With periodic shows, no one in Ghostville ever requires food again.
- Concept Art Gallery: Throughout the game's landscape, the player can find up to eight scrolls and up to eight figurines. Collecting these unlocks exhibits in the art gallery. Figurines unlock a total of seventeen close-up models of creatures in the game and scrolls unlock a total of twenty pieces of
Concept Art. The last two pieces of concept art show creatures that didn't make it into the game, those being vampires (which were possibly replaced by the unknown ones), a character that could be anything from a merchant to a circus performer to a mayor, a fuzzy critter, and a zombie farmhand (this one likely was replaced by the two pumpkinheads). - Cooking Mechanics: Once the kitchen has been fixed up, meals can be ordered from it. Cooking turns unconsumable ingredients into edible meals (technically, meals that can be exchanged for food points) and meals can be sold for more money than their bare ingredients go for. At the kitchen's base level, only moss eyes and sweet steak are available. The first upgrade further unlocks northern honey, sweet eyeberry, and family lunch. The second upgrade completes the menu with spicy pork, north side, and root cocktail. Although this makes for eight different meals, only three of them (moss eyes, sweet steak, and north side) do not require flying pig's legs, saint el, or magic pollen. These three ingredients can only be acquired from defeating invaders and not only are invasions rare to begin with, only one type of invader shows up at a time. Only four samples of a given ingredient can be acquired per invasion. Once the leprechaun is defeated, no invasions occur at all anymore. So, the meals requiring the invasion ingredients are barely going to be cooked. Furthermore, there are requests to cook northern honey and family lunch mid-game, so if the invasion ingredients haven't been collected by then or have been lost, all the player can do is wait until another invasion occurs and hope it's by the right invaders.
- Credits Gag: The Mirball Studio credits at the end of the cinematic trailer are delivered tongue-in-cheek. There's seven of them: Serge Vorozhtsov "Always watching", Sergey Konorev "Animated all corpses", Ilya Guzarov "Stole idea from the demons", Kamil Ginatulin "Squeezed music from it", Boris Dyatlov "Did all dirty work and also painted it with" Evgenia Bocharova, and Ilya Volkov "Listened to strange noises".
- Dem Bones: Skeleton Pelos is an elderly skeleton with a beard and a cane. After Ghostville helps him retrieve his leg from a mine, he guides the scientific development of the town with instructions on how to set up a laboratory.
- Floating Platforms: The bridge from Ghostville to the steppe consists of stone tiles floating in the air along the shape of a winding path.
- Glowing Flora: The mushrooms harvested in the town itself and the moss harvested in the forest are blue and glow.
- Gluttonous Pig: The flying pigs are the first of three kinds of invaders to show up in Ghostville. They are large, red, bat-winged, and overall look demonic. If the flying pigs reach the central storehouse, they'll drain the food supply for as long as they're left to do so. If they're defeated, they drop flying pig's legs.
- Golem: Golem the Crybaby is a badly injured stone golem is encountered in the mountains. His poor state is the doings of the leprechaun, who has stolen a Very Important Stone from the golem — a cobblestone that keeps him together. Once the player retrieves it for him, the golem heals himself and clobbers a way through the rocks to give Ghostville's workers access to the desert.
- GrimReaper: The assistant is a grim reaper. They're a skull with bony arms and the rest of they body is the cloak they wear. They do not have a scythe or any other attributes common to the grim reaper. The assistant keeps track of Ghostville's developments, guides the player to new projects, and warns when there is an invasion.
- Hellhound: There's a three-headed pink-and-white poodle that viciously guards the desert until they're appeased with six servings of family lunch. Only when the player has done that will the mummy dare to leave their pyramid and lend aid to Ghostville.
- Inconsistent Dub: Some words are translated differently to English between instances, which sometimes makes instructions unclear. When the assistant tells the player to prepare six servings of "family dinner" when the only available such meal in the kitchen menu is called "family lunch", that won't cause any problems. But when the player is instructed to sell "wood" at the trading post to help Deadville, odds are that people will sell "tree", freshly cut logs that in all other quests are referred to as "wood". But that doesn't work: what the assistant wants is for the player to make the building-specific item "plank" and sell that to fulfill the request.
- In the Hood: The unknown ones are the third of three kinds of invaders to show up in Ghostville. They are figures hidden in brown cloaks and that carry around burlap sacks. If the unknown ones reach the central storehouse, they'll drain the magic supply for as long as they're left to do so. If they reach the central storehouse, they'll drain the coffers for as long as they're left to do so. If they're defeated, they drop magic pollen, vaguely suggesting they may be plant creatures.
- Knight Templar: The knights, also known as the light knights, are the second of three kinds of invaders to show up in Ghostville. They are hidden in armor and look heroic, but if they reach the central storehouse, they'll drain the coffers for as long as they're left to do so. If they're defeated, they drop saint el.
- Leprechaun: The cunning leprechaun is a spiteful trickster that becomes an enemy to the whole of Ghostville after he's been outwitted twice. First he gets beaten into a drinking game over the golem's cobblestone he stole and later he gets tricked into stealing a sheep he's made to believe wears expensive jewelry. Seeking revenge, he summons flying pigs and unknown ones to bleed Ghostville's resources dry while he teleports around the map to stay out of reach. Catching him a few times makes him surrender and he's locked away for the duration of Ghostville's celebration.
- Lucky Rabbit's Foot: The Rabbit Bone is an item given to the player by the weird shaman if they retrieve his Voodoo Doll for him. It is a rabbit's foot with a bone prominently sticking out and it grants its holder the ability to talk to trees.
- Meat Moss: The second plant to become available for farming is bush meat. It's a flower which petals are slices of meat.
- Mummy: The timid mummy lives inside the pyramid in the desert. Across their home is a fancy doghouse for a three-headed poodle, which may or may not be their dog, but if so he has poor control over it. The mummy is fully wrapped up except where his mouth and eyes are and those spots appear to be hollow.
- Mystical Jade: After freeing the mummy from their pyramid, they will request that the player locates their jade cat statue from the desert crypt to the north. The reward for Ghostville's help is a donation of twenty crystals.
- Non-Entity General: The player takes the role of mayor in Ghostville and is tasked with developing the small settlement. They're being talked to directly by their assistant and other characters, but don't have a physical presence in the game. The player's assistant also is a non-entity character because while they have an appearance, they haven't got a physical presence in the game either.
- Occult Detective: Paranormalist Vladoff enters the Hereafter through a magic portal, though only after help from the player can he actually leave the portal. Vladoff is running an investigation into the afterlife, but is a bit of "that guy". He has drawn a mind's eye on his forehead with a sharpie and he is exclusively interested in the souvenirs Ghostville produces for its tourists.
- Our Mermaids Are Different: The Little Mermaid is first encountered in the swamp, where she's stuck in the mud. Using magic on her transports her over to a lake nearby the witch's wagon. Eventually, the witch tires of her ceaseless singing and swimming and has the player use magic again to move the mermaid to Ghostville's docks.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The residents of Ghostville are zombies. They have green-to-blue skin, miniscule pupils, and wear dated clothes. They don't need food other than to stay happy and magic and entertainment work just as well for that purpose.
- Patchwork Map: Clockwise from north-west to south-east, Ghostville is surrounded by a lush forest, craggy mountains, an Egyptian desert, and a wilted steppe.
- Plant Person:
- Unknown ones may be plant people on account that they drop magic pollen upon defeat.
- The last plant to become available for farming is the mandrake root. It's unclear if it's a regular weirdly shaped root or if it has awareness.
- Pumpkin Person: Two of the Ghostville's non-zombie residents are Tony Pumpkinhead and his grandfather Conrad, pumpkin-headed beings with humanoid bodies like gnarled roots. They own the two farms that feed the town and Tony takes on the leprechaun in a drinking game on behalf of Ghostville.
- Raising the Steaks: One of the last creatures encountered is a skeletal sheep that still has its wool. It's peacefully chewing grass on a hill, but needs to be moved from there so the giant talking tree can set root in its superior soil. With fake jewelry, the leprechaun is tricked into stealing the sheep.
- Shout-Out:
- The game opens with the line "Over the hills and far away...", a reference to the old British song "Over the Hills and Far Away".
- [[Film/Scream Ghostface]] stands around both at the cemetery and in one of the windows in Deadtropolis in the cinematic trailer.
- As the camera zooms out of Deadtropolis in the cinematic trailer, Jay and Silent Bob are leaning against a building to the left.
- As the camera zooms out of Deadtropolis in the cinematic trailer, the logo of 12 Monkeys is graffitied on the wall to the right.
- As the camera zooms out of Deadtropolis in the cinematic trailer, there's a Resurrection Booth with a queue in front. This is a parody of the Suicide Booth as seen in Futurama.
- While the camera zooms out of Deadtropolis in the cinematic trailer, the main four boys of South Park are waiting at a bus stop.
- Tech Tree: To improve the town, the player needs to start building projects and later upgrade projects. To build or upgrade, research has to be completed first and which research can be done at all is limited by the laboratory's state. It needs to be upgraded twice to get access to all research.
- Thinking Up Portals: The leprechaun has the ability to generate portals to skip from place to place. He used it to steal the jewelry-covered cheap and during his final attack on Ghostville.
- The Underworld: The game takes place in the hereafter, where seemingly everyone goes to. In the cinematic trailer, the main polity is Deadtropolis, but it's rapidly reaches its population limits. This is where Ghostville comes in, as it is a developing town that could take some of the pressure of Deadtropolis. In the game, there's also mention made of a large city named Deadville, which may be Deadtropolis by another name or truly another city.
- Voodoo Doll: The only interaction with the shaman is a request to retrieve his Voodoo Doll from a site to the north. In exchange, he donates the Rabbit Bone to Ghostville so that the player can communicate with trees.
- Wicked Witch: The witch is a conventionally ugly woman who lives in a wagon in the forest. If she's given soap and moss, she brews up a potion to blow up rocks with.
- Wise Tree: The old tree is a tree with a face growing so that he blocks the entrance to the sole crystal mine on the map. He can only be communicated with after the Rabbit Bone's been acquired and requests help moving to the green hill to the south. Obviously the exchange is Ghostville's access to the crystal mine.
- Witch Doctor: The weird shaman is a green-skinned figure wearing beads, feathers, a skull necklace, and a wooden mask. He wields a staff and practices voodoo.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: Gold needs to be collected to fund the various town projects and to acquire more residents, a number which is capped at thirty-six due to there not being more than six houses. Wood, stone, and crystal are the key building materials, though crystal only becomes so later in the game and early on is needed to fund research in the laboratory. Food to keep the workers working is gathered and farmed. Alternatively, magic can be used to keep them happy, either by casting spells directly or by funding the circus with it. Magic can only be acquired through the magic magnet, which needs to be constructed first.
- Zombie Gait:
- When the happiness of a worker reaches 0%, their eyes roll back, their mouth falls open, and they stretch their arms out as they shuffle ahead in search of food to regain their composure.
- The mummy's default pose has them walking with their arms outstretched.
