We are finally back from PAX East 2016! It was an amazing trip. 15 of us came down to Boston to show a demo we made specifically for PAX. The reception has been overwhelmingly positive and we all feel completely energized from all the support and love we received from everyone who came to see us. We were eager to get back into the office to keep on working on the game.

Some nice articles and videos have surfaced already, which sum up very well the demo experience and contain a lot of interesting information about the game, the gameplay and the project!

We Happy Few is a roller coaster of creepy vibes and eccentric humor - Destructoid

First Look at We Happy Few with Sam Abbott

Interview with David Sears, our Design Director

Thank you so much to all of our backers and new fans who came by to see us. Your support means a great deal, and every time we see a long time fan or someone who is cosplaying from the game, it fuels our passion even more. Here are some pictures from the trip:

For those who couldn’t make to PAX but have access to the pre-alpha on Steam, we pushed the PAX demo live yesterday! Read all the notes here.

Kickstarter Rewards 

The T-shirts and posters were sent to all backers who had ordered them last week. Some of you in the U.S. have been getting them quickly, but if you are in another country it might take a tiny bit longer. If in 1 week you have not received your reward, please contact us at [email protected].

Design Team

Vince

Hey guys and girls! I really hope you liked the PAX demo, or will like it if you haven’t tried it yet! We got a lot of great feedback, so thank you. Now that this is done, we are aiming for our next big milestone, Early Access! That means we will work really hard in the coming weeks to bring you more content and to open it to the general public! I can’t be much more specific, but if you liked the PAX demo, you will get a lot more of that kind of stuff. There’s going to be a lot more players too which is really exciting as they will see all that content that we have been working on for months now. I can’t wait to hear (and see, I’m sure there will be a couple of you guys streaming some play sessions) how you feel about it!

Mike

This week I worked on finalizing the gameplay in several encounters we worked on before PAX.

Here’s a bunch of small maps with minimal gameplay used to add detail, variation and patterns to the procedural generation.

Art Team  

Marc-Andre

Since the last weekly update, I've been arting up (lighting and composition) secret locations, worked on props and disturbing things I never thought I'd be doing in the industry (pee and vomit stain decals). Each week is a surprise!

Sarah  

The team and I were lucky to meet so many kind and enthusiastic people who came by the booth, so first I want to thank everyone who came by to try the game and say hello! Now that we're back from PAX (most of us sans speaking voice), it's back to the most joyful grind. This week I put my energy toward making some new war time adverts, and some scribbly art for a Top Secret encounter.

 Here is some art that we’ve used for PAX for posters and postcards.

Whitney  

This week I recovered from PAX, concepted a spooky location that I'll show you next week, and started organizing the workload for Early Access. Muchos Spreadsheetos. Here is a picture I painted of Arthur running from an angry mob of Wellies :) I did this over a long period of time, between regular art reviews, quick concepts, spreadsheets, and meetings ;) It took me longer than I'd like to admit.

Narrative Team 

Alex 

This week I did a bit of follow-up from PAX. For example, watching new people play our game, I noticed that players were not always aware they were wearing the wrong clothes. So I wrote some barks for Wellies to get bent out of shape if you’re wearing rags, and Wastrels will mock you for being dressed all fancy. 

More excitingly, I finally got a PC on my desk. I write on a Mac, but I can’t use our tools in Unreal Engine 4, which means I can’t tinker directly with the game; I have to impose on the Level Designers. Since then I’ve been rewriting journal entries into Arthur’s voice — a job I’ll have to repeat with the other playable characters. 

And, of course, I’m continuing forward on editing our audio cutscenes whenever I have some spare cycles. The animators seem to like our actors’ work:

Thank you for tuning!

Compulsion Team

As you know we are gearing ourselves up for PAX East 2016. Things are going very well, everybody is putting their blood, sweat and tears into the PAX demo, so we hope that you’ll enjoy it! 

Here is where we will be located at PAX:

 Also here is a little teaser of the PAX demo:

PAX Meetup  

If you are in Boston on Thursday the 21th we would like to invite you to come have a drink with us before the show starts. We will be at Stoddard's Fine Food & Ale at 19:30 getting our drinks on (but not too much as we need to be fresh for the show in the morning). As backers you have made all of this possible and we would love to be able to thank you in person. We'll have a few other developer friends there, so there might be some surprises.

Attention cosplayers!

If you or a friend is planning on cosplaying from Contrast or We Happy Few at PAX, please come by our booth so we can take pictures! We have a limited number of signed posters available, which we’ll be giving away to the cosplayers :)

Art Team  

Whitney

This here is the house of Johnny Bolton, aka, The Hermit. Johnny clearly thinks he's someone special.

Don't get in the way of the Jubilator unless you want a face full of Joy! Doesn't sound so bad actually.

Marc-André  

This week, I did some quick prop modifications and optimised grass levels of detail by adding geometry to cut down chunks of masked area, thus saving processing power. I also started working on level art and lighting for PAX. I worked on the Stonehenge encounter and something special you guys will see soon!

Design Team

Mike

This week I’ve worked on the demo we’re gonna be showing at PAX East next week!

In this encounter you find important object for crossing the bridge to the next island. It can be completed in several ways!

I also had a bit of time to work on a new encounter that’s going to come some time later :P

Bug Showcase  

Twas the night before Christmas

 New combat system combo (just kiddin’)

Community Showcase  

Contrast cosplay by Sladkoslava and Mioko_Sama

 Art by Horrorshow

Screenshots taken in game by Nautilus

Wastrel Army by Iris_Lockspur

Thank you for tuning in!  

Compulsion

Things are pretty crazy on our side as we are getting the build ready for PAX, organizing the booth and ordering all the necessary swag. There are a million things to do in order to be ready, but so far everything is looking good.

While it is hectic, it is also very exciting. From building the booth on the Wednesday/Thursday and seeing all the other companies building theirs from the ground up, to the following frenzied 3 days filled with red bull, fandom and buzz from the show floor, we’re looking forward to all of it :)

Narrative Team

Alex

This was a busy week for dialog. I recorded eight hours of sessions with six voice actors; next week I’ll record more.

Not every voice actor is equally talented. Some nail the line just from reading it; those actors are gold. I can easily get 180 lines an hour with someone that skilled. Fortunately, those are often the people who can do multiple different voices and accents, so we can use them for multiple encounters without the player thinking, “Enough with that guy, already.”

It goes more slowly with people who are less skilled. I sometimes have to build a performance, first saying, “really ask the question,” then “okay, and you’re 20 feet away from the player when you ask it” then “and you’re really pissed off.”

“Really ask the question” is something I have to say a lot. When you’re running through a bunch of lines on a page, it’s hard to invest your soul in each line. Sometimes they come out sounding like, well, like someone’s reading lines off a page. That’s when I have to say, “Okay, I really want to get a sense who you’re talking to,” or “Really ask the question like you want an answer.”

Some actors can do an accent, or act, but not both at the same time. Fortunately, most of our NPC’s are regular British folk, and so are our actors.

A lot of this work goes unnoticed, if I do it well. When it comes to conversations that you hear in the background, if it sounds human and real, then you won’t notice it. If it sounds wooden or contrived, you’ll notice that it’s bad.

Or, you won’t notice. But you will know somehow. You’ll feel more like you’re in a game and less like you’re in a world. I like to say, “The audience doesn’t know, but they know.” I guess I could unpack that to mean, “The audience doesn’t know what’s right, but they do know when it’s wrong.” If the actors, even in the background, don’t believe in the imaginary circumstances, then the player won’t, either. If we get details wrong, the player may not necessarily be aware of them, but the player will know there are shenanigans going on.

Apropos, Whitney and I had a big argument over dumpsters, or “skips” as they seem to be called in England. David needs places for the players to hide. Dumpsters would be easy to make. And there were dumpsters in England in 1964.

However, in our world, there are no functioning dump trucks. The whole point of a dumpster is that it is emptied by machinery, not by hand. So, from my point of view, there can’t be dumpsters.

We had a big jolly back and forth about that. In the end, we settled on ash carts. They’re a bit like dumpsters on wheels – a small skip that a horse pulls. While the Wellies don’t seem to have any surviving horses, they probably do burn coal, and coal makes ash, and ash has to go somewhere. So ash carts make sense. And it is revelatory (in a small way) if a world without horses is still using horse carts to get rid of coal ash. Clearly some poor bastards are dragging the ash carts around when you’re not looking.

The audience doesn’t know, but they know. They wouldn’t necessarily think, “Dumpsters, wtf?” But they would maybe feel like our world was a little less hallucinatory. On the other hand, handdrawn horse carts in 1964 reveal something about the world. It’s those details that create emotional engagement, I think.

Art Team  

Warren 

This week we finally answered the burning question that leads to awkward conversations: Where do Bobbies come from?

I’ve also been working on stuff that makes walking around all willy-nilly a little more dangerous. Keep your eyes open and disarm tools at the ready.

Marc-André  

This week I've been working on creating new beautiful parks for the Garden District, as well as a water pump. I've also been fixing a lot of trivial generation bugs here and, to add realism, added some falling leaves to the autumn trees. I have also remade the clock!

Emmanuel

I’ve been working on the houses from the Garden District, but I won’t show too much of it as I want to keep it a surprise for the next update :)

Design Team

Vince

As you may know, we are going to be at PAX pretty soon so you can try the game. And that means making a somewhat special build of the game. And that means it has to be good. And that means bug fixes! Polish! Integration! There is some new content in the PAX build so I had to concentrate on making this content game-ready. Knowing that one of my levels will be played by hundreds of people pretty soonish for the first time is really cool.

Speaking of which, one thing that I find really hard in level design, is balancing the difficulty. I mean, when I create a level, I know every little thing about it, so it’s always too easy for me (and I do also play it a few dozen times or more). But seeing a new player actually try it for the first time is amazing because they always play it very differently (or at least a little) from how I would.

That’s when I can really fine tune it and balance it better: is it too hard? Are players just walking by what I thought was clear and obvious? Are players lost as to what to do next? Sometimes, players just totally break or bypass the challenges of the level, and that’s always a big surprise, like… “How did I not see this?” *facepalm* But in the end, it’s totally worth it and even essential. It helps me build a better experience for you guys.

Mike

This week I’ve been working on a bunch of different things, mainly:

• Improved visuals for the Safe House of Garden District 2 
• New drink item “Soft Drink” 
• Mysterious Chest now has some “mysterious” reactions when you open it ;) 
• More bug fixes! 

Other than the I’ve been creating new content for the PAX demo (It’s gonna be awesome by the way). If you’re planning to come at PAX East this year please come see us :D 

Animation Team

Vincent

This week we mainly focused on giving a bit more life in the Village (other than walking around that is). So after finishing a very long and secret cinematic, I hopped on gameplay animations, whoo! 

Some are pretty basics and essentials NPCs animations, like nodding when being talked to, giving an object to the player or… taking joy. Yes, believe it or not, the forever-high citizens of Wellington Wells didn’t actually take any Joy outside of the Mood Booths. That should be repaired and they now can indulge drug abuse anywhere they care to! 

Some are a bit more specific, like meeting in a dark alley in order to proceed to shady business...  

Bug Showcase

Do you like Huey Lewis and The News?

Bee-ware: these placeholder textures might sting! (these should be bees)

Thank you for tuning!

Compulsion Games

Today isn't your regular update... it's a really big totally not joking even though it's April 1st update. No really, it's all very honest. Maybe we're the fools? Here's what we're talking about this week:

• The We Happy Few Steam page is now up!
• We're coming to PAX East! And changing up the pre-alpha for April.
• T-shirts and posters for Kickstarter backers are almost here!
• Super awesome dev updates

Steam page

We are glad to announce that the official We Happy Few page is up on Steam!

"That's the great thing about the wishlist. You don't have to remember! It notifies you when the game is released on Steam. Ha ha ha. Downers."

- Uncle Jack

Thank you to everyone who shared the news on Twitter and on Facebook - it's really helping us to spread the word. Please continue sharing the news with your friends and family, as adding the game to their wishlist will be the most efficient way for them to get notified of the release :) And, as you know, spreading the word is the biggest hurdle we have.

For those of you who have access to the pre-alpha, you can now upload your screenshots directly to Steam! Others can marvel at your photographic genuis. And, if you're a regular Steam user, feel free to drop by and hang out with us on the Steam forums :)

Kickstarter Rewards  

We are also really excited to announce that the T-shirts and Posters for Kickstarter backers will soon be on their way. They are currently in production, and we're hoping to have those finalised and ready for shipping by the end of next week. As a reminder, the box sets and other physical rewards will take longer to ship, as we will still be creating art and music for some time to come.

For all Kickstarter backers with physical rewards, please make sure that your address is up to date inside BackerKit! This is really, really important, as we don't want to send things out to the incorrect address. If you have any questions or concerns, email us at [email protected].

PAX East 2016

PAX East 2016 is in 21 days and we are going to be attending! We have gone a bit ridiculous this year, and really hope to see you guys at booth 9148. It's going to be something else. 

Last year we met a lot of amazing fans, and many of you have been following us closely for over a year. The feedback and encouragement you have given us has been immensely helpful. We can’t thank you enough, and look forward to catching up with you this year. 

Stay tuned for a blog post with more details about what we have in store for you at PAX ;) 

Narrative Team

Alex

This week I wrote up another slew of encounters, including one in which we discover how Wellies become Wastrels. I wrote up a bunch of conversations that Bobbies can have between each other while you’re stalking them. Apparently they discuss boots and food a great deal, but you might learn one or two things about the world if you listen. We’re prepping for our big recording sessions next week, where we hope to get quite a lot of encounter dialog with multiple actors in England, drawn from, I am told, a theatre. Let us know if any of the new dialog, once it’s integrated, sounds stagey.

As you know we’ve been working on a “death and dying” update. Naturally, that calls for Arthur to have an obituary. Because we are quite mad, the obituary for each cause of “going on vacation” will have a few different bits of Arthur lore; all of which requires a bit more thinking than writing.

In my copious free time, I’m continuing to work on Mad Scotsman’s playthrough, editing the cutscenes. We’ve discovered that some scenes were not adding enough to his story to justify their existence, so we cut them, and I’m weaving the remaining scenes back together. That will take a little new dialog, a new encounter, and some environmental cues.

And, I’ve been looking for someone to video us at PAX. I think I’ve found a good guy. Hopefully you’ll see some nifty updates.

Meanwhile we’ve been discussing and designing the new multiplayer mode. Obviously we can’t have players just talking to each other with headsets; they won’t have the right accent, generally. To keep the “voice” of the game we’ll probably have to use some sort of system where players can select barks from a range of prerecorded responses. In keeping with our overall ambitions, it should be a pretty wide range of responses. Once we implement full body awareness, players with motion capture rigs (like a Kinect) should be able to communicate by gestures, too. We won’t have any of that ready for PAX, but maybe soon after. So far, we’re primarily testing multiplayer in the Linux build.

Design Team

Vince

Hello everyone! I didn’t update you guys for the last two weeks, so let’s do a little recap! I did a few simple encounters named “Record locations”. They are basically normal Garden District houses, but once you progress to a certain point in a certain quest, those 3 normal looking houses will now Wastrels with updated dialogs and a new chest containing quest items. It was simple in terms of layout, because I’m just using any old Garden District house. The challenge was to actually spawn new Wastrels with custom behaviors.

Next on my list was pretty much cleaning up after Shawn made new level art for all the Garden District houses. They look a lot more “inhabitable” now, and much less brown. Unfortunately, changing a lot of stuff in these houses caused a few problems, but I’m always here to clean up everything. No worries, everything is working fine now! And looks much nicer too, thanks Shawn!

Finally, I did have time to, at long last, work on an awesome encounter I might’ve mentioned before: hallucinogenic salad. There was also new art for this house, and since it’s a Garden District house, I had placeholder VOs to add, new animations. It’s one of the best parts of the level designer’s job: put everything the other team members made together and being the first to play it and see it all unfold. It’s always very gratifying for everyone to see all their hard work come to life.

The next best step to this is actually watching you guys play it and enjoy it (hopefully) when it’s all done ;)

Art Team

Marc-André

This week I've been working on tweaking the new filler generation system in the Garden District to remove a lot of bugs I’ve encountered. Bugs such as floating wooden planks in the streets, missing rubble piles and foliage. A lot of decorative objects have also been added to the buildings to help embellish the area.

Emmanuel

This week I was transformed into an ugly old grumpy goblin and I was placed underground where I had the task of shoveling piles and piles of feces in order to get better loading times. I was able to get my head of the ground for a few hours to make a new CubeMap :')

I have been doing mostly “under the hood work” a.k.a some optimisation:

Shawn  

The past few weeks I have been focusing on the interior houses in the Garden District of Wellington Wells and a few of the encounter areas. Most of this work has been going in and furthering the look already in place. More high class stuffiness! A lot of my focus previously was outside of the editor so it has been fun to get my hands dirty in engine again!

Bug showcase

It’s 5 oclock somewhere

Hatchman

Lovely day for it 

Thank you for tuning in!  

Compulsion Team