Set in retrofuturistic 1960s England, We Happy Few gives you a chance to explore a city ravaged by war and rebuilt by delusionally happy people. Everything appears joyful in Wellington Wells, including its roads, its people, and its omnipresent television personality: Uncle Jack! But, it’s actually a world on the brink of collapse hiding its dark history, and your task it to discover how and why its residents came to be so beguilingly happy. The upcoming survival’s premise sounds pretty "crazy," doesn't it?
In an interview with Game Informer, producer Sam Abbott explained how the game has changed so much during its development and whether or not he's afraid of comparisons to Irrational Games' BioShock. We Happy Few released as an early access title in July 2016, and "things have changed an astronomical amount since that point," Abbott said. "When the game comes out, I think people are going to say that this is one of the games that has changed the most during the Early Access period."
"We launched in Early Access and people said, “This is great! But where’s my story? I’ve got this survival sandbox,” Abbott continued. "And we were like, “Okay, well, we were building that in the background,” because Early Access is not particularly well-suited to story-based games." The moment gamers played the early version for the first time, comparisons to BioShock became inevitable.
"The early reception we got - everyone was so enthusiastic and we started getting comparisons to games like BioShock. We were 15 people at the time. That’s an order of magnitude different from the team that built BioShock. We sort of looked at that and thought we had two options: we can keep building the small game we were thinking of. Or we can say, why don’t we give it a go?" Abbott said
At launch, We Happy Few will feature a separate mode that will focus on survival and procedural generation. According to Abbott, procedural allows Compulsion to build out this world and make it feel rich and complex and interesting, with a relatively small team. Thanks to the new story mode, We Happy Few is not a repeatable one-hour game is used to be and now offers a 20-hour+ experience.
We Happy Few is the tale of a plucky bunch of moderately terrible people trying to escape from a lifetime of cheerful denial in the city of Wellington Wells. In this alternative 1960s England, conformity is key. You’ll have to fight or blend in with the drug-addled inhabitants, most of whom don’t take kindly to people who won’t abide by their not-so-normal rules. Discover the retrofuturistic city’s dark history as you play through the intertwined narratives of three quietly rebellious citizens of Wellington Wells, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, as they face their pasts, prepare for the future, and engage in activities that aren’t exactly status quo in the artificially enthused society.
We Happy Few officially releases on August 10th.