We Happy Few

Who is this game for?

• Achievement hunters
• Cutscene fanatics
• End of world survivors
• Indie game supporters
• Psychological seekers
• Roamers of the world 
• Story-driven gamers

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Explanation to Negative Feedback

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Bad combat system

Like, I enjoy the fact that there are multiple weapons to use, when and if you find them–unless you prefer to be a street brawler by fisting people in the face–but it’s just so boring. You’re either swinging a weapon to bash someone with, or swinging your fists to punch someone repeatedly. Aside from blocking, there’s nothing more to it.

Character repetition

One of the things that some games fall into is cloning the same people over and over to make an area seem like it has a large population, but in reality, women out there are pumping out identical sextuplets or more. With so few areas cluttered with a certain amount of people you see over and over again, it’s really noticeable to the point you just ignore what everyone looks like.

Open world is bland

It’s kind of a shame that this is the case, because when you look at Wellington Wells, everything is glorified and eye-catching, but when you’re traveling out in the open world…it seems like some of the walking simulators I’ve played, where the environmental details are reused and become dull after a while.

There are different flower bushes you can obtain items from. There are broken down cars on the side of the road that might have something.

And…a path you can follow if you want to deal with guards.

And…more of the same.

The only interesting places are the dilapidated buildings that you can snoop through and maybe gain some backstory like toward the beginning of the game, but it’s not like they’re in abundance.

Too much loot

Going into this game for the first time, it makes you believe that looting everything valuable (ie not rotten food) from the get-go is the way to get through the game, and really, it’s not. Sure healing items are great if you get hurt in fights and such. Yes, you’ll want some throwable items and even lockpicks to get into places.

But there’s so much loot in this world that you just don’t need it all. Not only that, but you have a restriction on how much you can carry. There’s just no need for all the loot that’s available.

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Explanation to Positive Feedback

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Graphically nice

They’ve done an amazing job with the graphics in this game.

There are basically two different styles you come across.

One is the grunge look that depicts the depressed style of those that no longer take Joy or have received bad batches of them and can’t take them anymore, I think? Run-down houses in the garden district. Missing floors and side foundation in general. Overgrown foliage. People walking around in torn clothes.

Then you’ve got places like Hamlyn Village that are a bit more cleaned up and as soon as you pop one of those Joy pills around this area you’re going to notice a clear difference in graphics.

You’ll be in LSD town.

So many bright colors will assault your vision and you won’t know whether you should be happy like your character or fear for your life because that Joy isn’t going to last forever and if we know anything about drugs, there’s a crash that comes after.

Unfortunately, a downside is that everything graphic-wise tends to look the exact same.

Pretty immersive

I mean, you’re in a world that is split between those that take Joy and those that are Downers. You have to blend in with whatever society you’re stepping into, and when it comes to Wellington Wells, everything looks to be rainbows and happiness. By taking Joy, you kind of see things how everyone else does, and everyone is friendly toward you.

Be a Downer, and you’ll be chased down and beaten.

Well-done voice acting

The voice acting is on point.

From the people who are actually on their Joy to the people who are Downers and no longer take Joy, you can definitely tell the difference between the two groups. And for us, as Arthur, you can most certainly hear the depressing edge in our voice when we speak, especially when it comes to Percy.

Every main character that we come up against in conversation has their own personality in how they talk to us as well.

The main problem here comes from the random NPCs that you come across while walking through the town or open environment. They either ramble and say some nonsensible things that make sense to them, or they repeat the same lines to us as we pass them by. And it gets kind of monotonous after a while. Maybe even a little annoying, because there are a lot of people you pass in town, even if they’re the same person.

You’ll find that some of the lines in this game reference a wide variety of movies, books, possibly other games, and maybe more.

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Links Worth Checking Out

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• Nothing here yet

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Gameplay

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Game Length

For the main storyline, it may take you around 21 hours to complete according to Howlongtobeat.

Completionists are going to be having a doozy of a playthrough at a whopping 50+ hours.

Replay Value

Not so much.

Genre(s)

• Action/Adventure
• Psychological Horror
• Survival Horror

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We Happy Few Review

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TL;DR Review

We Happy Few has flaws, and maybe a lot more than what I touched base on, but a lot of people were happy with the game as it expanded upon its first release. Not on its release, because of the high price point and the lack of…much of anything within the game itself to hold itself to such a high price. But the game becomes better during the added DLC–which is a shame because it falls short after the first part of the game.

Above all else, I really wish the combat was a bit better, though it makes me wonder if maybe they were more focused on the stealth concept of the game–what with the fitting in with the residents with the different clothing sets and how you need to take Joy to pretend to fit in and go through the Joy detectors.

Even then, the stealth is a bit broken, because if you avoid the sight of an enemy for even a small amount of time, they’re just completely confused on where you went and wander off. So stealth is more of an I-don’t-really-want-to-fight-right-now and it’s an avoidance tactic.

Or some way to better stealth kill an enemy, I guess.

Still, they’ve got fun concepts for weapons when and if you find them. Their durability is a bit of a bummer. It’s super easy to forget about the durability too, until the weapon breaks.

As far as the hunger and thirst thing, I’m not sure why that’s in the game. It even states in a small tutorial that you can deplete your hunger and thirst meter entirely and nothing will happen because of it. The only reason it is there is for you to eat and drink to gain more stamina and such for a specific amount of time. I feel like skill-up items would’ve maybe been better for it.

The environment gets more than a little stale after a while. There are talent points, but I honestly didn’t look too deep into them. So yeah…there were so many areas where it could’ve been a much more playable game.

But I’m a sucker for games that focus on story, and that’s what this one did from the very start.

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In-Depth Review

We Happy Few starts out with us taking newspaper articles that are coming down in capsules inside tubes, and we’re using a redactor in order to either black out articles that aren’t of a happy mindset, or approve them. I’m not really sure why we’re looking through past newspaper clippings or where they go from here. If people still do read the newspaper, you’d think they’d be fresh off the press and not something that’s dated years back.

Unless while you’re on the happy pill, you don’t really take notice of the date and just read the good stuff to make your day an even happier one?

We come across one article titled Hastings Brother Win Scrap Gathering Prize which brings us into kind of a flashback situation with one of the boys yelling the name “Arthur,” which is us. So apparently we got separated from Percival while people were boarding a train.

At this, we have the choice to either Take Joy or Remember.

• If you choose Take Joy, you’ll get the achievement Snug as a Bug on a Drug and the game will end.
• If you choose Remember, the game will continue, and so we’re going to pretend you chose this option.

Time goes by and one of our coworkers comes in after our prolonged silence and reminds us of someone’s birthday party–one that they’ve got a piñata for. She picks up the Joy pill we’d tossed on the ground asking if we’d forgotten to take it and we lie so disastrously that one has to be happy that people on Joy aren’t that quick to read emotions very well.

Our power cell becomes depleted, making us look for another one in the room–the whole time being watched by this lady. This also sets up the idea that in the future we’ll be needing power cells in order to activate machines. I guess they’re the equivalent of oversized batteries.

Once you place the new one in, you can start using the redactor again.

It doesn’t matter if you approve or black out the wrong things, the game won’t really call you out on it as a negative impact, but if you get all the articles correct, you’ll earn the achievement Employee of the month.

After you’ve run out of articles, you can move around.

At this point, you’ll notice that you can look inside a variety of things, and yes, this is one of those games where not every cabinet and desk and what-have-you will have something in it. And if they do have something in it, they sometimes won’t have something of worth. While you’re in the building, you won’t be able to loot any items that’ll help you in the future, but you will notice that some things are locked, making me think that we’ll return to this place in the future.

That or it’s telling you you won’t be able to open everything you come across which is another valid point if you don’t have the appropriate tools.

There are different notes and letters that you can pick up throughout the building to kind of get a feel for certain people if you feel like snooping. You might come across the characters later–dead or alive–or you might just get a small amount of backstory.

Some of the letters you get inside Clive’s room are:

• A Letter from Miss Byng
• Handwritten Letter

And if you use his redactor and sabotage his work properly, you’ll get the Enjoy the view achievement.

Once we head to the birthday party room where we get to beat the crap out of a piñata that isn’t really a piñata at all (Joy obviously skews our way of perceiving things, and since we’re off it, we can see what’s really in front of us). We get chased out into a sewer area, because nobody likes a Downer, thus ending Arthur’s intro and earning us the achievement Downer.

When we wake up, we’ll go into the only area we can that provides us with different loot and different areas to look for loot in. Like I said, not every place has something and when you do pick up loot, keep in mind you only have so much capacity for things to carry. So hoarders like me who loot absolutely everything shouldn’t do so in We Happy Few. You won’t need to. It’s all about holding and crafting the items you’re actually going to need and everything else is just kind of extra baggage.

I don’t think there’s even any way to sell items in the game, but if there is it’s a bit later as the first portion of the game just has a lot of homeless Downers that can’t even think of a good comeback to what you say to them.

In this underground area we’re in, we can acquire the following notes:

• What Were You Thinking
• Tie a String
• Diary of Prudence Holmes

At some point, we’re met with a locked door which will require us to make a lockpick.

For this game, you only have to make a useful tool once in order for one to keep being made when you need it, as long as you have the required materials. So if you make one lockpick here and come across something else that’s locked in the future, the game will automatically craft a lockpick for you, instead of you needing to do so manually each and every time. This is the same for other tools as well.

When you come across your first deceased body, there are the options of searching and carrying.

Most corpses have a weapon on them if nothing else, but sometimes they’ll have other components you might be able to use. The carry option is obviously a hint that you’ll be able to move bodies out of sight if you happen to kill someone in a public setting.

In this area you’ll also come across a golden mask for the Promises memory. You’ll find memories all throughout the world in different places. They offer glimpses of the past for some backstory. You can find another note labeled Diary of Theodore Miner.

Nearby is a Pneumatic Stash, which is a storage unit that you can place all your crafting components into and they’ll be used whenever you want to craft something that uses those components. Other things you place in here can only be used if they’re actually on your person. So if you have extra stuff that you know you won’t be using right away but you’ll need for later, it’s best to put them in here so they aren’t taking up your inventory space.

These stashes are in every bunker you come across.

You’ll also be opening up a locked door where you’ll get jumped by someone and will have to enter combat.

It’s really weird since this is a forced combat situation, but no tutorial on how to fight actually comes up. But the things you’re capable of doing are throwing a punch, blocking, and shoving. Not to mention you have a stamina bar and whatever you decide to do does take a chunk of stamina that slowly refills while you’re not doing anything.

If you take the time to notice, this guy’s name is Theodore Miner, whom we recently required a note from his diary.

When you’re inside the room, you’re going to want to look up for a vent that you can crawl into, and this is the game’s way of telling you that you should always look up in case there’s something that you’ll otherwise miss. Sometimes there’s a balcony with a chest on it and you’re only able to see it if you do look up.

There are things that are pretty easy to miss, honestly. And while they may not be crucial things for your gameplay of moving forward, some items could really help you out.

Before you leave the bunker, you can pull a switch on the wall that will activate a fast travel system. Once you’ve activated this switch for more than this bunker, you can easily navigate from one to another, but unfortunately, you will need to be inside of a bunker in order to fast travel to another area. So while it’s a perk, it’s also a little annoying.

The next section is the open world.

Here’s where you’ll notice a lot of different things, the main one being, aside from side quests, there’s really not a whole lot to do. And I can attest to this because after I’d done the whole bunker ordeal (which comes later), instead of going to the next quest area, I decided to have a look around the dark sections of the map that I hadn’t been to yet. Honestly, I didn’t think it would be so big toward the beginning. I thought maybe the map would be sectioned off depending where you’re at in the questline, but I continued traveling southwest.

You can find a quest here and there, dig spots (which are marked by finding specific notes of them), as well as possible notes in mailboxes, and the occasional house that might have things inside, but overall, there’s really not much to do. The Downers won’t have an actual conversation with you, and they’re only around during the day. At night guards patrol so you either avoid them or go into combat when they see you.

It’s not really worth exploring aside from the odds and ends and it’s best to just basically keep to the quests.

I can’t say for sure right now, but I’m sure as you continue more things will become available out in the open world (such as the bee hives I couldn’t mess with), and while the game allows you to openly explore…aside from finding hidden treasures, it’s like, why bother?

You get more story from the main quests, after all.

Even so, while you are out here, you’ll notice icons in the upper left of your screen signifying your hunger, thirst, health, and fatigue. Basically, you don’t have to help yourself to basic needs, but it will lower certain portions of your stats, stamina being one of them. But sometimes these things are hard to come by if you’re not actively searching everything you come across. Especially water.

You can find water pumps and sinks to drink straight from. But also canteens that you can fill with water in case you can’t get water any other way. With food, I’m kind of disappointed you can’t cook anything (unless that comes later?) because there are campfires around and you do get certain meat that can be cooked and become a bit healthier for you, like raw meat, for instance. Beds are sort of scattered around, mostly in houses but sometimes outside. As far as your health it’s really only a matter of crafting healing balm to keep it up when you get into scuffles.

I suppose it’s a typical survival game, without the downside of death.

Back to the main portion of the quest here, if you wander through town you might come across phone booths that have a phone ringing inside of them. By answering, you’re left with listening to an obviously cryptic message that you don’t really understand.

There was another point in this same area when the phone was ringing, but I wasn’t able to get to it, because I’d have to go all the way around to where it was, but by the time I got to it, it was no longer ringing, so they might be time-sensitive, or distance-sensitive. Wait too long or travel too far from it and it’ll just cut off, unlike in the game Ghostwire: Tokyo where a phone call was crucial to the continuation of the game’s story.

When you finally meet up with the people in town, you’re chased into a church, because they see you as some elitist city-dweller while they live in rubble without a dime to their name. By exchanging socks for information, you find out you can change your clothes to blend in with the residents by tearing up your suit.

Alternatively, there’s a suit you can craft for when you’re not among the Downers and instead need to blend in with people who take their Joy, but that’s for later.

In the church, you’ll find another memory called Lies that’ll give you a bit of backstory on how Percy will sometimes take the blame for doing some that Arthur did because he’s slow and won’t get punished for things that Percy would otherwise be punished for.

I feel like the memories are really good for building the relationship up between the two brothers, while also making us look shitty for leaving Percy behind on the train.

When you leave the church everyone’s bummed that they no longer need to beat you up because you look like them, but you also get a tutorial on status indicators for NPCs that’ll tell you whether they’re aggressive toward you, they’ve noticed you but not fully, or if you’re in the clear and they haven’t noticed you at all yet. The red triangle also reveals their health, so the more you hit them, the more the red within the triangle depletes.

If we head in the direction of the train station, we’re stopped by someone who says we’ll need an electric card and a power cell in order to get through the gate.

We ask if there’s a bobby around we can steal from, but this guy will trade, because you can’t actually steal from anyone, only sneak up behind and stealth attack them. Which is kind of like stealing from them, but they’re unconscious at the time of you looting their body so it doesn’t really count.

Anyway, we have to steal back his medals from some guys in a camp and in exchange he’ll give us the card we need.

Which means we have to travel to the camp where the thieves are. The front gate’s locked, which tells us in the future not everywhere is going to have a lock readily available to lockpick, meaning we have to look for other ways in. The only way to get in is through the back entrance and down the elevator, where we’re kind of ambushed and have to stow away all our belongings before they allow us to go further down.

There’s a note for Headboy Rules! on the wall you can read.

At this point, we’re forced to fight, and it’s a coworker named Danny Defoe that we used to work with–apparently he stole our work and pretended it was his, then we got him fired. Seems he holds a bit of a grudge.

You can choose either a bludgeoning weapon or a stabbing weapon. One will render the opponent unconscious and the other will outright kill them. Which means I suppose you could go for a pacifist run if you wanted to, but at this moment no matter what weapon you choose, Danny will always pick the lethal one. I mean, he really holds a grudge.

Here is where you get the tutorial on fighting, and again it’s weird that it’s at this point, because you’ve technically already had your first battle with someone after being chased out of your workplace during the start of the game.

After he’s down, they’ll send out two females to fight you, and once you get rid of them, you can use the elevator once again, except you’re dropped into a pit that you’re supposed to not make your way out of according to all the dead bodies around you.

Except you can get out.

When you do get out of the underground pit, you’re forced into taking your first skill, which is Sweet Dreams, an ability that allows you to choke people out when you’re not seen. This can happen whether you sneak behind them, or sneak up to them while they’re asleep, making it easier to steal from people at night rather than in the day, due to them being in bed for the most part.

This is the first main area where you’ll learn a lot about stealth and distractions. There are multiple items you can use to create distractions, such as the bottle for creating sound, but they don’t always go directly to the source. In games like Assassin’s Creed, the enemy will go right up to where a noise was made to look around, but in We Happy Few, they sort of stand a bit away, making you have to really deliberate where to throw things so you can actually come up behind people properly.

Although while that might be annoying, they do seem to stand and stare for a bit of time before returning to their normal position, giving you ample time to do your thing.

In this area, you’ll need to find both the medals as well as the power cell in order to be able to leave, and before you completely leave, you find all of the items you’d had on you before that you can grab before making your way out into another part of the camp, where you’ll learn to hide in tall grass.

It bothers me a bit that you can only hide in specific bushes with yellow flowers, because some bushes are high enough to conceal you as well.

Not only that, but when you’re crouched down in bushes, it’s sort of hard to tell where the bushes actually end before you accidentally step out of them. And maybe a little hard to see where someone is around you, despite their footprints showing up while you’re stealthed.

When you leave the area, the guy is actually at the church in town, instead of back at the area where you needed the key card. But once you’ve traded, go back to the bridge and you’ll learn that the revolver actually detects people who have not taken their Joy. I’m not sure what the end result would be for a Downer, because the contraption that comes up from the alarm seems to blow up.

Would we have gotten electrocuted? Would the bobbies have somehow been called and able to track us from where we were? We mention getting spanked, but I don’t think it’s the spanking you and I are thinking of.

Approaching the destination of the train station will result in a small cutscene with men trying to blow up a portion of the building because some guy at the top of the structure is hoarding meat, apparently.

The man at the top throws a bottle of what I presume is scotch onto a man’s head which knocks him out, and the guy with the explosive ends up blowing himself up.

It’s all very Monty Python.

When you’re able to move, you’ll basically be going around taking out the enemies in order to reach the train station. This was probably the main place so far where I’ve actually used trash cans in order to hide in from someone who might’ve either glimpsed me, or caught sight of an unconscious body. I don’t know how smart they are when it comes to actually witnessing you hopping into a hiding place.

I’m going to assume they’re pretty stupid and will stand there confused on how you disappeared, which makes it a good tactic to use just to disrupt their chase.

After reaching what looks like the train station, you fall through boards on the floor.

We have the worst luck because we’re Downers, right?

Now, there’s a dead person near us as soon as we get up and they’ve got a name on them like every other person you come across, but I’m just now wondering why? There are specific notes in this area you can find and I thought maybe his name would come up in one of the papers or we’d be able to link him to something.

Except I couldn’t with the notes given.

I’m not the only one that thinks this might be weird that every single character we come across has a name.

I mean, in reality everyone has a name, but how do we know everyone’s name? Even when we come across a corpse, they’re not going to have a wallet on them with their name in it because they’ve got nothing to their name. They’re officially nobodys.

Sure it sucks to be nameless, but these people are Downers, or wastrels is another name for them, I guess, and their lives suck. Technically, to every other person in the game, especially those who are on Joy, they don’t deserve a name.

So why bother giving everyone a name?

Unless they’re actually important. A name that will stand out to us if we come across a clue somewhere nearby.

At this point, the names are all there and they blend in with one another, so we don’t really think about looking twice at them or committing them to memory. Which means if we do come across someone who might come up again in a note or otherwise, we may totally miss it.

Going back to the room we’re in, we get a flashlight to help us see the dark areas around us.

I don’t know how much the flashlight will help in the future–I can only assume it will because why would we get an item that’s only good for a single area. Then again, as I say that, I think back to a variety of games that give you a helpful item that’s only use is for a short segment before it’s taken away, so maybe I’m wrong and this is a short-lived item.

In looking for the switch replacement, you come across three different notes labeled:

• Dear, darling Sebastian
• Happy Birthday Sebastian
• Sebastian, we are worried!

Basically Mom and Dad had their son hiding out here and were coming around to give him food rations, but suddenly he’d disappeared.

I looked around thinking I might find the body of the boy, but I didn’t see any sign of him, just his uneaten birthday cake and a pile of his clothes. Which makes me think maybe he did wander out of his hidey-hole, having been bored of doing nothing but hiding and got caught because of it. The only other option is…he died, except there’s no body, and even with the rats running around, they wouldn’t eat his bones.

On a wall there’s a note with a list of names and dates.

We don’t know Sebastian’s last name, but there is a Sebastian on the list. Sebastian Dainty, to be exact, and everyone’s listed with their birthdays. They were possibly keeping track of how old kids were in order to send them away on a train or not, which is the whole story behind Percy’s disappearance and our need to find him.

But none of the names stood out to me otherwise.

And I’m not really even sure if that Sebastian is the same as in the notes, as there’s two other names that share the same last name as Dainty. They can’t be his parents, because the dates are too close together, and the notes never mentioned any other siblings.

So what the hell happened to this kid?

As soon as we get out of this place, we’re met with a character named Ollie who’s sort of lost a bit of his mind, but I don’t know if it’s from the war or just segregating himself from everyone else. He comes at us with a weapon at it takes us a hot minute to finally convince him who we are before he bludgeons us to death.

I don’t think we actually convince him. It’s more he suddenly realizes it’s us after ignoring our shouts.

He talks to someone named Margaret, who he actually seems to consider whatever input she has to give him, despite her being nothing more than a portrait sitting on a table. After looking at the picture, we remember her from school and that when she was supposed to get on the train, she disappeared.

It’s weird that nobody would talk about it, but maybe Ollie took to her somehow? As a father figure or…something more complicated?

Did he help her escape the train situation and become infatuated with her in the process?

Would that mean he lost his mind when she died, if she died, but still thinks she’s here just because he can see her face?

It’s a lot of speculation at this point.

In order to get to the train station to look for Percy, we’ll need to enter the Parade, and that’s going to be difficult, but not to worry because both Ollie and Margaret have a plan.

We help Ollie get what he wants from the old German camp where a bunch of army guys wander about with bayonets, and he’ll help us get out of Wellington Wells. We just have to turn off the power. Once again, Ollie will help us get through the sentries blocking the path to the camp, we just have to meet up with him at the bunker.

Take note that after certain events or checkpoints, we do learn how to craft new materials for future use. I think that’s something that can be easily missed.

When you get through the sentry area, there’s a spot you can listen to a guy tell a story regarding an elephant to his mates that are passed out, but he’s too drunk and woozy to notice. Once you’ve listened to the best ridiculous story ever, there’s a ladder you can climb up for the memory Battleship.

On your way to the bunker is another memory you’ll find called Up a Tree.

At the bunker, Ollie will tell you what you need to do–which is to basically to break into the General’s office. Oh, and about those bayonets, while they might not have any bullets in them, the men can still very much stab you with them, so this is almost a purely stealth mission with possible bursts of running away in the foreseeable future.

You can pick up Ollie’s Moonshine Recipe, which doesn’t give much of a recipe, but you’ll be able to combine the ingredients when you come across the Distillery area of the camp. In order to grab some of the ingredients, you’ll need to enter a poisonous area, which a gasmask will help with.

I hope you have that gasmask.

I can’t remember where I found mine, but I’m going to assume it was in an easy-to-see location since they’re pretty hard to come by for now. And it’s really only good for this place here so far. A location that you can skip if you wanted to, and come back to later if you remember.

Basically, Ollie’s moonshine becomes Sick Up Tea that you can craft for when you have food poisoning and need to throw up.

While it’s not important, it’s something that’s useful.

Whether you learn the recipe or not, head into camp where there’s a cutscene of you falling into a tank which is actually just papier-mâché.

At this point, we make our way to the General’s tent, but can also sneak into other buildings. It’s wise to note these doors do have locks on them and it’s best to engage the locks while you’re inside. I’m pretty sure enemies will come barging into places whether a door is shut or not, but I don’t think they’d be able to come in if the door was locked.

It’s not a theory that I’ve tested up to this point, but I don’t see why they would give us the option to lock a door if that wasn’t the case.

In one of the buildings you’ll find the memory Scouts.

In the General’s office, there’s an alarm you can pull to put everyone on high alert outside. I don’t know the purpose of doing this, because you’re inside, you’re safe, and if you happen to leave, then everyone’s in a tizzy looking for an intruder, meaning they aren’t following their set path anymore. They’re a bit more chaotic to where they wander around and look so it’s easier to get caught when you leave a stealth position.

There’s a bit of a puzzle to go through in this office in order to get what you need and it involves piano sheet music that you’ll be playing on the piano. After that, a hidden area will open with a hatch inside as well as a key on the wall.

You can’t use the hatch until you’ve finished the mission you’re on right now, which is a hint in itself as to how you’re going to get out of this camp in the end.

Once in the generator room where you shut the power off, the alarm will go off, and like I said before, everyone is a bit erratic in their search for an intruder and so you’re going to either do a combination of stealth and running, or just full on running back to the hatch you were at.

When you get back to Ollie, he’s having a conversation with…a couple of bottles that are taped up to power cells.

I’ve no idea what they’re supposed to be. Molotov cocktails? Either way, he’s still as kooky as before.

Not to mention at the realization that the tanks were fake we’re also met with the truth that we lied to get off the train. Which is weird, because if they fell for the lie of a child, couldn’t anyone have just lied to them about their age or how their birthday was written wrong?

Like how did Arthur get away with that but nobody else tried?

Ollie gives you what looks like a headlamp, but since neither one of us knows what it actually is or does, we’re going to use it to convince the bobbies we’re there to fix the bridge, since bringing an item that looks important might be enough to persuade them you’re telling the truth.

At this point, I did a lot of exploring of the map before heading to the proper destination.

Turns out aside from a couple side quests, hatches, and reading of notes in post boxes, there’s not a whole lot to do. And I spent a couple hours scouring areas, mind you.

Once at the bridge, we speak to the Bobby who gives us some lip, but after showing off our item that Ollie gave us, the bobby mistakes for an undercover bridge inspector, he tells us where the maintenance hatch is, except we don’t have a keycard to get in, so…that was a little pointless, and now we have to go into the waiting room and take a so-called test like any regular citizen trying to get in.

What sucks at this point is we’re going to deposit all of our items into a stash that isn’t connected to ours. They take everything from us, and we don’t get it back when we come out the other side.

So all the supplies you had that you hadn’t already placed in storage are gone by the time you enter the town, making you look for them all over again, though a lot of the items you’ll need, such as lockpicks, don’t offer you a lot of the components in town. In fact, most of those components are found out in the wastrel area.

Meaning fast travel is kind of a must to collect specific supplies.

And I hate that.

Anyway, as you make your way to this “test” in question, you have to take a shower, put on a proper suit, pop a Joy from a telephone booth before going through the lasers that’ll fry you otherwise, and then get to watch a show in an empty movie theatre.

The tests is like a game show, where you’re standing at a podium with buttons to choose. There’s a series of questions you’ll need to answer before you’re good to go.

Except the game host repeats herself and you have to go the back through a vent to the main area to hop in the elevator and come out the other side.

Now, We Happy Few puts emphasis on Joy, from the very start of the game, but you don’t need to take them or be on them constantly. In fact, there’s a punishment for having taken too many, kind of like an overdose I think, but also while you’re on Joy and come off of it, you become depressed and have to hide from the citizens and bobbies until you’re more stable.

But once you’re off it, you don’t have to take them again.

Not unless you want to make your way through a Joy detector, and even those have ways to be deactivated with the appropriate item.

Then again, if you’re close to overdosing, I think there’s an item you can have that will get rid of all effects of Joy, making the meter start from scratch, which is nice, but…why put so much emphasis on a pill when you don’t have to be on it constantly around other citizens?

How does anyone know who’s on Joy or not if they don’t go through a detector that calls them out on it?

At this point you might have noticed in your safe houses there are two different tables, one for chemistry and the other for mechanical needs.

When crafting specific items, you’ll need to be at one of these desks. But also on these desks you’ll also find some helpful blueprints that might help in the future, so there’s that. There aren’t a whole lot of items that you’ll need to stand at these tables for…but when you come across an item you need that requires one of them, it is a little annoying.

But not everything can be made on the fly, I guess.