We Happy Few, a dystopian roguelike by Compulsion Games

On the stream I was watching for that one of the guys in the stream picked up that it was an actual animal really quick.

The game's up on Early Access! Anybody play it?

I myself have a theory: Uncle Jack isn't real. Why do I think this? He's played by a real-life actor rather than a computer model, so that means we probably won't meet him face-to-face. Which means that it's likely we'll storm his castle (or whatever) at one point to reveal that he doesn't actually exist per say.

I've seen Achievement Hunter play it a few times, though they never got out of the initial area (after the prologue, that is.)

I was never super into the game, but that sucks big-time. Despite our R rating in games, stuff like this and Hotline Miami 2 still get banned by proxy in Australia due to being refused classification. I was even thinking about Hotline Miami 2 the other day - what a crock.

I feel like the Australian backers might be able to still receive their backer rewards as well as a copy of the game, if the game comes in a physical form. It might not be available to buy, but to my knowledge you can receive something that's been refused classification unless it's specifically been banned - Mortal Kombat 9 was banned for years, to the point of it being intercepted at the border, but I don't think everything that's been refused classification has outwardly been banned. Hopefully backers can even get it digitally, due to the backers paying beforehand. If the game is region free, it should hopefully be pretty easy to get your hands on it from official sources - even if you have to do some VPN wizardry to do it.

This is an ass decision, but instead of getting this thread closed for necroing or for going off-topic with censorship talk, let's stick to productive posting. If there's a media censorship thread on OTC, I'd personally love to know about it because I have some things to say on the subject - but just for the sake of stating it, I think it's a good idea to keep things relevant to the game and its specific news in this thread and leave discussion of wider media censorship to OTC.

Also I agree with , it didn't seem like the sort of thing to get thumped.

edited 29th May '18 8:41:43 PM by MrMallard

I have no idea why a link saying Australia had banned the game would be thumped.

It's a ridiculous ban.

It's banned because it promotes drug use because Joy can sometimes help you blend in.

Blend in with a society on the verge of collapse due to drug use.

It's also a Fantastic Drug.

It's like if they banned a game due to the character taking the spice melange.

Edited by SgtRicko on Aug 11th 2018 at 11:47:47 PM

That reminds me of the Green Goblin comics getting rejected by the Comic Codes Authority for including drug use. This is despite said comics being funded by the government to spread an anti-drug message.

So, what do people think?

I liked a lot of it but the ending just...didn't do it for me.

Tl:dw; a joyless overpriced piece of garbage that was riddled with gamebreaking bugs upon release and relies on dated survival game mechanics that make the game less fun. Everything besides the actual gameplay in this game is pretty good...but it's a videogame. The gameplay is what matters.

Edited by M84 on Aug 22nd 2018 at 10:34:49 PM

We Happy Few seems like a perfect fit for a Life Is Strange/Telltale-esque game, not... whatever this gameplay is.

I feel this game needed a cannibalism mechanic.

I personally would have suggested a System-Shock esque FPS game (which I'd probably call a "Shock-like"). I mean, hell, I'm quite comfortable calling the game a Spiritual Successor to Bioshock. Heck, probably even more so than Infinite-a game which was good, but had basically suffered from not being late to the tragedy and the populace not being insane, just regular evil. Part of Bioshock's horror is that the Splicers were once humans and they're now insane, tortured monsters. Same goes for System Shock. Wellies feel a lot more like Splicers by contrast.

With the gameplay, I do think it's a bad fit, though knowing the process the game went through to get made I understand it (they started with the goal to make a procedural generated survival game. Then they decided to try putting it in a city, because you rarely see those sorts of games in a city. Then they ran headfirst into the problem that there's a reason those games aren't put in cities).

I don't think the game's bad. The mechanics aren't even bad, they're just a bit mediocre. I'm willing to put up with mediocre mechanics for an interesting story. So I'd say it's a "Good, but not Great" game.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Aug 22nd 2018 at 8:57:48 AM

soooooo, an immersive sim like prey ? Now that'd be my cup of tea.

I was interested in this when it was announced, and while I'm a plot > gameplay person I don't think I'll be paying full price for this.

A shame, between this and Hello Neighbor that's two early access games with supposedly lackluster releases.

Joyless. *snort*

Honest Game Trailers laid into the game this week, and well, they seem to agree with the premise being great but the gameplay...not so much.

So basically, Compulsion Games went the route of Quantic Dream, where they cut back on gameplay in favor of trying to tell a story.

But without needlessly shouting "MIIIIIIICHAEEEEL!"

It's not that they cut back on gameplay — that could have worked. Think The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

It's that the gameplay that is there is just...bad. And often buggy.

> MIIIIIIICHAEEEEL

RICHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARD!

Edited by theLibrarian on Aug 23rd 2018 at 12:05:26 PM

No, the opposite - they tacked some overly-complicated open-world survival gameplay onto a game that would have been perfect as a more simple Shocklike (is that a recognizable enough phrase? "Shocklike"? Bioshock, System Shock, etc..?)

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Aug 23rd 2018 at 10:50:21 AM

I recognized it as System Shock rather than Bioshock, but I got what you were saying.

But yeah, Jim Fucking Sterling, Son points out that the survival mechanics were old hat by the time the game saw release, and they contributed to the game's failure. And that's not even considering the many bugs and such that he has video evidence of. It just seems like when Gearbox decided to buy them up, Compulsion did the dumb thing of going "I guess this means our game is good, time to expand the story rather than fixing the core mechanic that really matters."

I think "Shocklike" is a good term for it, personally. The tone of the game is also what I call "Stepford Apocalypse", which generally revolve around cheerful (usually nostalgic) propaganda contrasting with nightmarish surroundings. Bioshock, Portal, Fallout, and We Happy Few all have this sort of tone.

But anyways, what happened with the game's development is that they started with a survival game. But they wanted to try something unique and asked "where hasn't there been a survival game in yet?" and they realized: Cities!

So they had to justify why a survival game would take place in a city, and how that'd change the nature of a survival game. They came up with the dystopia of Wellington Wells, but the problem was that the story and the city itself was far more interesting than the survival mechanics. For example, exploring the city (what the player actually wants to do) is difficult when you have to return to a water source every now and then.

Eventually, they themselves realized the problem and toned down the survival mechanics, but the game's origins as a pure survival game still linger and drag it down quite a bit.