We Happy Few is not a bad game but does have flaws. This game was a bug fest on launch day. The game really needed pulled back when it was launched on august 10th. The game suffered many frame rate drops which is really bad for a game that took 3 years to make! This game was a Kickstarter for an indie company who wanted to make an open world survival game. The game went through many changes during alpha and beta versions. The first ever build was made in 2015 and was a pre alpha. The pre alpha just had you walking about the world with NPC (non-player character) characters walking about. The pre alpha was just mainly a tech demo build to see what was possible for this game. Much work went into the game and it soon got a story. The story was unfinished during the alpha and beta days so the developers kept on adding new nooks and crannies for the game while it was being made. The games intro has always been the same. The first time they made a story to the game is when they added the intro.

You start the game as Arthur, a newspaper editor. Arthur makes sure that newspapers are approved for the people of the town to read. Arthur soon sees a newspaper about him and his brother winning a scarp prize. Now don’t think that I’m right about them winning a scarp prize (fictional prize for journalism found within We Happy Few) because I could be wrong. When Arthur sees the newspaper he remembers his brother getting taken away on the train to Germany. Arthur picks up a joy pill thinking if he should take it or not. The game then gives a choice to remember the past or take your joy and forget. If you take the joy the game will give a joke ending. If you’re the one for achievements then you should take the joy because you will get an achievement. While Arthur is remembering the past, a lot of time flies by. His boss Miss Bing walks in wondering what he was up to for the past hours. She reminds him that they’re having a birthday party for a co-worker. She finds a joy pill on the floor and asks Arthur if he had forgotten his joy. Arthur lies and tells Miss Bing he did. She believes him and tells him to finish up his work. She takes the joy pill she found on the floor and gives a wide grin to Arthur.

Arthur’s power cell then runs out of power so he looks for a new one. He finds a new one and gets back to work. This is where the story starts to kick in. once Arthur is done the rest of his work, he heads to the birthday party. When you’re heading to the birthday party, you can see a big screen playing an uncle jack recording. Once inside the party, Miss Bing hands you something to hit the piñata. When you hit the piñata blood comes out. Inside it was a dead rat, definitely not for the faint hearted. Miss Bing notices that Arthur is off his joy and offers him one of her pills. Arthur slowly backs away in refusal. Everyone then starts freaking out because he has become a downer. Arthur then gets chased out of the building. I think we better talk about the final build now.

There is no need to talk about the intro because it’s the same in the final build. The game finally begins when you wake up in the tunnels. You will learn a few game mechanics in the tunnels such as lock picking and combat. Once out the tunnels, you are in the gardens. The garden is where the downers live. The garden is more about learning how the game works in the first main chapter. It takes a wee while to get to the village which is kind of misleading because the village is what you see most in trailers for the game. The bugs in this game on launch were so bad. The PS4 suffered the most which is annoying because I happen to have a PS4 copy which is the platform that this review was played on. Many PS4 users suffered a lot of crashing during the games first few weeks. The PS4 was really trying its best to handle the games bugs but the system just couldn’t push through. I hadn’t really heard much about the Xbox and PC versions of the game having as much major issues as the PS4 version. I have only ever seen the Xbox version crash once.

The verdict: ‘We Happy Few’ is a fun and enjoyable game but suffers many problems. The game has hope to get better in time. The DLC (downloadable content) is something that is still going. You can check out the Rodger and James DLC by purchasing the season pass or purchasing the DLC on its own. We Happy Few gets a 7/10.