

Arthur also has flashes of memories of his brother Percy, which touch on the siblings’ relationship. Arthur ran into a few old friends during my playthrough of the demo, including a former co-worker (whom he’s forced to fight to survive) and an older friend of the family (who attacks Arthur after not recognizing him). The story of We Happy Few seems to be doled out over character interactions and hallucinogenic flashbacks. I scavenged for berries to stave off hunger and took a quick nap so Arthur wouldn’t be tired, for example. As you play, you’ll have to monitor characters’ vital stats, like health, toxicity, hunger, thirst and fatigue.
We happy few update 1.0 upgrade#
You’ll have access to a skill tree through which you can upgrade characters’ combat skills, stealth mechanics and special abilities. It appears there’s also some depth, and some vestigial survival mechanics, in We Happy Few. There’s a bit of puzzle solving, plenty of scavenging for supplies and a strange world to explore.

I mean that in a good way - I kept thinking of Half-Life, No One Lives Forever and BioShock as I played. We Happy Few feels like a throwback to the mid-to-early 2000s in its first-person exploration gameplay. These early hours primarily served to tutorialize We Happy Few’s combat and stealth mechanics, both of which feel serviceable and vaguely familiar. Here, Arthur is forced to fight wastrels and crazed Joy users as part of a fetch quest: retrieving stolen war medals for a local veteran. My demo consisted of a trip to an area called Barrow Holm, a war-torn, abandoned region, and an infiltration of the Headboys Hooligan Camp, home to a local gang and an underground combat arena. While I didn’t use that ability to much effect in my demo, blending in and disappearing seems helpful in a game where Joy-addled creeps are out to get you.Īrthur’s adventure sees him coming off of a Joy high and experiencing the grimier side of Wellington Wells. He has the ability to blend in among crowds: One of his talents is that he can sit on a bench, read a newspaper and simply disappear. We Happy Few describes Arthur as swift and unremarkable. Arthur has given up the hallucinogenic drug of choice in We Happy Few, known as Joy, and begins to see the town of Wellington Wells for what it really is. My preview focused on the character Arthur Hastings, a journalist turned government censor in search of his missing brother Percy.
We happy few update 1.0 mod#
It’s more than just a game with a sense of style somewhere in the vicinity of BioShock and Dishonored, spiced up with British mod flair - it’s an intriguing, dystopian world that feels fascinatingly retro. The 90 minutes that I played of it shows great promise. The narrative nature of We Happy Few is a major departure from the game’s origins, when developer Compulsion Games was styling it as a roguelike survival adventure.įortunately, Compulsion’s mid-development change to We Happy Few seems to have paid off. When We Happy Few leaves its extended early access period and officially launches this summer, it will include roughly 20 hours’ worth of story spread across three playable characters as they explore an alternate-history, 1960s-era England.
