Citizens - their high spirits and homogeneity ensured by mandatory white masks - play hopscotch, cuddle on benches, march up and down jauntily with elbows akimbo, trade morsels of village gossip. Head to the Parade District, the game's most affluent area, and you'll find candystripe roads, stooped cobblestone houses and tar-beamed pubs tucked in amongst modern residences with space age furniture. Riffing on the films of Stanley Kubrick and Terry Gilliam, the portrayal is absurd, fulsome, both dainty and menacing, with all manner of sceptred arcana popping through the seams of its tweed jacket as it brings a cudgel squarely down on your face. Set in the cheerily nightmarish, procedurally generated township of Wellington Wells during an alternate history in which World War 2 ended rather differently, it's a dystopian compilation of British traditions - the keep-calm-and-carry-on ethic of the Forties, the fledgling consumer culture of the Fifties, the sugary tunes and hedonism of the Sixties. Availability: Out August 10th on PC, Xbox One and PS4Īn uneven yet fascinating first-person role-player that mingles elements of immersive sim design with open world survival mechanics, We Happy Few is a love letter to all this, and - well, let's just say the letter isn't written in ink.