We Happy Few

We Happy Few is an indie survival video game being developed and published by Compulsion Games for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux and Xbox One systems.

The game revolves around the English village of Wellington Wells set in an alternate timeline around the 1960s; the villagers committed an unspeakable horror to end a Russian invasion in years prior, and all but a few have opted to take a hallucinogenic drug called Joy to forget their past and consequently allow themselves to be easily controlled. Wellington Wells has become a dystopian retrofuturistic-fashioned society on the verge of collapse as their supplies of Joy and food are running out. The player controls Arthur Hastings, a newspaper "redactor" who stops taking Joy after seeing an article clipping about himself and his brother, bringing back painful but important memories, and starts to see the state of Wellington Wells as it is. Arthur must find a way to escape the island that Wellington Wells is on before the pending social collapse but without arousing suspicions of the other townsfolks of being a "Downer", which would cause them to violently attack him and end the game. We Happy Few is played from the first-person perspective, and has the player guide Arthur through Wellington Wells, collecting resources and crafting tools to help towards his escape while avoiding detection by the other townsfolk. The player can opt to have Arthur take measured doses of Joy, which will help allay suspicions towards Arthur but can have negative consequences once its effects wear off. The game includes light roguelike elements, such as permadeath and the procedural generation of the town on each playthrough.