The jury is out as to whether or not we live in a computer simulation. But take a look around, and it seems an overwhelming majority live in a mass collective hallucination. The Quebec-based video game company Compulsion Games explores this conceptual territory in We Happy Few, which they recently teased at E3 in Los Angeles.The roguelike game is set in a retrofuturistic England ravaged by war and currently under the spell of an oddly happy mass hallucination created by a pill called “Joy.” The scenario seems a bit like the Kids in the Hall’s "Brain Candy" film meets Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror. Players can assume a number of characters, flawed instead of heroic, with their goal being to escape Wellington Wells without being noticed.
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“If you act out of turn, or they notice you’re not on Joy, the locals will become suspicious and will rapidly turn your frown upside down! Forcefully,” Compulsion explains on their website. “You will need to practice conformity, stealth, and combat if you want to survive long enough to escape.”If players die, they must start over again. Compulsion designed procedural generation tech, which means that players won’t be starting over in the same city, but in a new version of Wellington Wells. Compulsion is still fixing bugs in We Happy Few, but are updating the progress regularly on their website. Check out a bit of gameplay below:
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