Can you make him happy again?
Happy Game is a Point-and-Click Psychological Horror and Surreal Horror game developed by the independent Czech studio Amanita Design.
Our main character, a nameless young boy, falls asleep to a horrible nightmare one night, created by a mysterious being, the Smiling Demon, seeking to harm him for unknown reasons. Unhappy, the boy must now set out to face each nightmare presented by the entity to escape and become happy again.
The game follows a similar playstyle to most other Amanita games, but is significantly much darker in tone (and definitely not happy). The game was released on October 28, 2021.
Happy Game contains examples of these tropes:
- All Just a Dream: The game begins with the child going to sleep. Though this trope is likely Subverted. While most of the events really are nightmares, it's heavily implied the Demon is real and created the nightmares the Child is having. The Demon is present in the flashbacks showing how the Child lost his toys and dog, and in the second flashback the Child seams to actually be able to see the Demon.
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: The main character's parents never appear onscreen. Best not to think about it too much.
- Ambiguous Situation: Is everything in the game real and the Child really is being tormented by an Eldritch Abomination for its own sick amusement or is everything part of a Dying Dream as the Child, now an adult, suddenly seems to die in his room? Neither sound particularly pleasant, so it's probably best not to dwell on it.
- Amusing Injuries: One puzzle has a Ripper seeing his own eyes pop out and starts smiling at it. Not that it really injures him.
- Animal Stampede: A possible variant with "plants" instead of animals. The Child and his dog end up riding a Pumpkin to get past some scarecrows, only for it to stampede along with other Pumpkins across a white void.
- Animate Inanimate Object: You'll encounter some from time to time, including but not limited to living toys, guillotines, rocks, and so forth.
- Balloon Belly: Feeding a rabbit a carrot will have it gain one, but it loses it if they're cut apart.
- Big Bad: The Smiling Demon is the one responsible for giving the Child deadly nightmares which he must escape.
- Blatant Lies: The title Happy Game doesn't really bring to mind a violent, psychoactive horror game that is definitely not happy. Heck, a warning before the gameplay starts directly clarifies that Happy Game is not a happy game.
- Body Horror: Unlike the games beforehand, Happy Game dabbles into this frequently, especially during the final sequence of the second nightmare, which depicts mutilated, still-living bodies of the previous characters littered throughout the abyss. Other occasions include cutting bunnies into two new ones, the heads of the Elk exposed on sinew, and a smiley face creature having arms poke out of its face orifices.
- Botanical Abomination: The Pumpkins in the third nightmare. Two small variants resembles crude scarecrows, and they're capable of teleporting the Child to each other if he gets too close. The larger ones resemble hollow jack-o-lanterns, but breaking them reveals them to be shadowy...things with sticks for legs. Said legs also make weird creaking noises in a musical sort of fashion.
- Bright Is Not Good: The majority of the second nightmare consists of lush candy colors, but the chapter is also very grotesque and gory.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The Elks in the third nightmare look absolutely nothing like elk, instead resembling little cyclopses with antlers.
- Casting a Shadow: This happens in the background lights during the first nightmare, often showcasing things to come in the next encounter.
- Crapsaccharine World: The second nightmare's first half shows this, with idyllic grassy fields, happy rabbits and cutesy heart people...and also vicious, monstrous giant rabbits and head explosions at the slighest unhappiness for the Hearts.
- Creepy Children Singing: The soundtrack uses eerie childlike voices in some of its songs.
- Creepy Doll: There are multiple instances in the first chapter. One sequence festures the Schoolboy, a giant doll with a glass head that the ball you've been chasing gets stuck inside, and a doll features in the room of broken toys, with her arms stretching and her head splitting open to reveal a shadowy creature holding the next toy piece.
- Cute Creature, Creepy Mouth: In the Child's second dream, if you ring a bell, a giant rabbit pops up. It is cute and brightly-colored, but then it opens its mouth unnaturally wide to devour a smaller rabbit alive, revealing a Lamprey Mouth and its true colors as a Hair-Raising Hare.
- Darker and Edgier: Compared to Amanita Design's other games, some of which were slightly dark but otherwise happy, this game showcases a young boy being targeted by a demon seeking to torture and kill him in his dreams at any opportunity. Speaking of which, you also get to witness various sorts of blood, mutilation, psychological trauma, and lord knows what else being conducted in the nightmares, unlike previous game titles. The game also has a darker twist on Chuchel's comic setup of somebody constantly chasing after something, as the Child's desires for the ball, stuffed bunny, and puppy are more tragic and the scenarios where they get wrenched away are played more cruelly.
- Deliberately Monochrome: In the real world, dull colors cover everything, with the only exceptions being anything with red colors like rugs, pajamas, and toys. In stark contrast, the colors in the nightmares are bright and showy, especially the second nightmare.
- Delicious Distraction: The large rabbits will pause in chasing the Child and eat any bloated bunnies in the way, giving the Child time to run.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Downer Ending described below shows the Child remaining trapped in the nightmare after everything he had to go through, panicking for a few moments before calming down a bit and drawing a smiley face on the camera. As one YouTube comment on a playthrough of the game pointed out
, this can be taken as a metaphor for having to cope with adulthood in general - inevitably, you WILL lose your childhood innocence, especially due to the loss of those close to you, but even though there's nothing you can do to get it back, you can still grow in its place the resolve to tell yourself that you've made it through it all and to keep going forward. - Downer Ending: The Child seems to have woken up from his final nightmare and has reclaimed all of his precious items... right as the screen glitches out and reveals the Child has grown up, but he has collapsed on the floor while something pops out of his chest. The game ends as the boy is still trapped in a nightmare, drifting off after he draws a smiley face on the screen.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Demon. It is a vaguely humanoid creature or ghost that is capable of manipulating peoples' minds and memories and crafting vicious nightmares out of them. It's powers aren't just limited to your dreams either, as its apparently capable of summoning objects back into reality.
- The ending sequences for the third nightmare have several of these guys as well, this time being ghastly germ-like creatures that hide in mutilated dolls in the middle of a red space, and their intentions for the Child are less than peaceful.
- For Doom the Bell Tolls: Progressing through the first half of the second nightmare involves tolling a living dinner bell to open a hole, summoning a bunny to eat you. Unless that bell is yellow, the monster will catch you.
- Go Out with a Smile: Implied. Possibly. The ending quickly flashes to the Child lying on the ground, head melting, with a smile, seemingly implying that he died, or will one day die, after enduring interminable nightmare tortures, while bearing the expression that has haunted all of his dreams.
- Gravity Screw: The second nightmare takes place in circular spaces that wrap around with gravity pulling the characters down as they walk through hamster-wheel style. The effect is made more visible when the camera zooms out during the first two rabbit chases.
- Hope Spot: The Child reawakens from his nightmare, and he actually manages to get his beloved item back and play with it. Then something pulls said items away, and the Smiling Entity reappears to put him back to sleep. And this happens two more times..
- Played much more cruelly the third time around. The game ends with the Child waking up for real and goes out to play with his dog...except this is just another part of the nightmare he's in, and he's seemingly trapped there forever.
- Horror Hunger: The large rabbits in the second nightmare will ravenously eat their smaller counterparts, as well as anybody else that is nearby.
- Killer Rabbit: The Child encounters a few large rabbits in the first and second parts that will ravenously eat whatever's in front of them when summoned by the Dinner Bell.
- In the third part of the second nightmare, a slightly smaller, heart-faced rabbit can be summoned by the Bell, which then hunts the Child down while using its arm tongue to attack.
- In the last part, two will appear in the giant smiley heads. One is large and will impale small cockroaches. The other one is a smaller variant of the little bunnies, but it will mutilate a tiny emoji person once you switch their roles in the machine.
- Light Is Not Good: You see that spotlight illuminating the darkness, or maybe that sun shining in the sky? That's actually the Demon staring directly at either you or the Child.
- Losing Your Head: The Child survives a Ripper pulling off his smiley helmet with his head inside, and enters a brief sequence rolling around as the head inside the helmet. Later, the final nightmare has a sequence where the Child enters two headless scenarios after trying to climb on a smiling boulder.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The first nightmare takes this to the logical extreme, as the Child is surrounded by nothing and can only move forward to progress. Outside of the occasional background lights Casting a Shadow, you can only guess what Eldritch Abomination awaits you next.
- Perpetual Frowner:
- In the fourth part of the second nightmare, the Child encounters creatures called Rippers, creatures that frown all the time and tear off the heads or helmets of anybody who enters with a smile. Once the Child exposes a Ripper's eyes, it suddenly smiles at the sight of it.
- The Dinner Bell is always met when it's a crying, unhappy mess. You have to line up everything correctly for it to even crack a smile.
- Perpetual Smiler: The Demon's face is always in a constant, glowing smile that never moves (although it's stated to be a mask of some kind). This also goes with most other creatures in the dream worlds.
- Plant Person: Two in the third nightmare. One is the Elk, a group of mucky cyclops people with tree branch antlers on their heads who can float. The others are the Ents, towering masked creatures with limbs resembling a cross between birds and branches. These guys can also float as well, with the camera pulling back to show the one the Child encounters high in the sky.
- Sadist:
- The Demon. Whenever the Child's in trouble or about to get his toys back, the Demon will usually either laugh at his misery, or it just trolls him in a mischievous manner. Unfortunately, you get to see this happen a lot.
- The emoji person in one of the second dream's smiling heads is utterly sadistic. Offer them one of the bunnies and they will gleefully mutilate it until it's decapitated or worse. Apparently they can't take what they dish out, as they're screaming and crying when one bunny does the same.
- Shell Game: The Rubik's Cube toy hides a creature inside running a cup shuffle game. You'll never find the bead in the cup you select, and the item you really need is under his hat.
- Splash of Color: The first nightmare is heavily desaturated with the exceptions of vivid, often harsh red tones for the toys.
- Surreal Horror: The game takes Amanita Design's surrealism into the realm of the disturbing, displaying horrific visuals and animations that only barely make sense in a dreamlike fashion.
- Troubled Child: Going by what the memories show, the Child's life doesn't seem great, with his three key memories being the loss of a toy ball to a bullying older kid, the loss of his toy bunny in a river, and the loss of his puppy in a forest. It's also implied in the dream world that he suffers from an auditory disability, which the Demon takes advantage of.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: The Hearts in the second nightmare feature several optional small puzzles that allows you to ruin their fun and pop their heads, while only a few interactions are actually required to set up the guillotines and survive the rabbit attack in their area. The Hearts will all end up dying of terror when the rabbit appears, but the game allows you to take a more active role in their demise beforehand. You even get an achievement for killing them all this way.
- White Void Room: One appears close to the end of the first world, and it's filled with broken red toys.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Demon doesn't give a damn about the Child's suffering, regardless of what he suffers in the nightmares. Speaking of which, some creatures in the nightmares will torture and even kill him given the chance.
- Your Head A-Splode: If you interfere with what the Hearts are doing, they will become unhappy and then this trope happens to them. The other Hearts seem to find this rather funny. Most of the Hearts can be actively dispatched by the player this way, but all of them will have this happen when the giant rabbit in that level is unleashed.
