Jul 30, 2019

We Happy Few - Captain Scarlett

Hi everyone,

We are excited to announce that Lightbearer, our second DLC is now live on Xbox One, PS4, Steam and GOG!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65HH7Bga0Y4&feature=youtu.be

In this second piece of handcrafted Season Pass content, you play as Wellington Wells’ most beloved rock star, Nick Lightbearer, in a brand-new story! Heartthrob, artist, and personal trainwreck Nick Lightbearer is adored by legions of fans—until disaster strikes when a Nick-centric fan convention is plagued by a string of murders. When all signs point to him as the killer, how will he reconcile the disturbing overlap between his own blackouts and the killings?

It also features a brand new song from Murray Lightburn (The Make Believes, The Dears) “I Have Seen Everything”.

You can get this DLC as a standalone here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/974580/We_Happy_Few__Lightbearer/?curator_clanid=6699463

Or as part of the Seaon Pass here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/919000/We_Happy_Few__Season_Pass/

Cheers,

Compulsion Games

Jul 26, 2019

Update 1.8 is live!

We Happy Few - Captain Scarlett

Hi everyone,

We are happy to announce that update 1.8 is now live on Xbox One, PS4, Steam and GOG!

We are aware of a specific issue that was specifically affecting PS4 users where there was a chance of the game crashing upon arriving in the Parade District, this issue has now been fixed with this update.

Patch Summary

This patch contains performance optimizations, crash fixes, fixes for progression blockers, fixes for gameplay and UI bugs, and localization fixes. Most importantly, this patch includes a significant improvement to the memory used in the game, fixing crashes and bugs that were happening in the Parade District on all platforms but especially on PS4.

General Bugs/Stability

• Fixed a crash that was happening when the player would greet another character while they had equipped pickup.
• Fixed out of memory crash that would occur on certain world seeds in the Parade District.
• Fixed "Busy" warning message when trying to either "Quit" or "Return to the main menu" while in an area of the game where it is not possible to save. “Cannot save” text now clarifies that saving is disabled in these areas.
• Fixed a bug where characters could get stuck inside NPCs when shoving them in a corner and crouching inside them when they get up.
• Fixed UI message prompts when quitting a DLC game that were misleading, as it appeared to the player that progress had not been saved.
• Fixed Game Settings: Lighting no longer restores to "medium" upon restarting game.
• Fixed heavy flickering when selecting a DLC icon with the mouse and changing the selection with the keyboard.
• Fixed pressing Back and Confirm simultaneously in the Arcade or DLC menus led to a story menu that has no background.
• Fixed the absence of background image or music on game details page on function screen.
• Fixed some settings reverting to their default value after restarting the game.
• Fixed subtitles being truncated with certain settings.
• Fixed when choosing the "Revert Changes" option in the HUD option menu, the joy HUD icon was set to off by default.

Arcade Mode

• Freeform: Fixed the Gameplay sub-window getting cropped when choosing High NPC Density on certain languages.
• Freeform: Fixed the description of the mode being truncated when playing in 21:9.
• Freeform: Moving between the white backyard tables and the stone wall behind them no longer causes Arthur to remain permanently trapped.
• Freeform: All item names in the Crafting Menu with a status effect icon in their descriptions are no longer truncated.
• Freeform: While in the Holy Yam zone, you can no longer see under the map.
• Freeform: Fatigue, hunger and thirst meters used not to deplete once they were filled to 100%, but they now do.
• Freeform: Total Score stat is now accurate on End Match screen.
• All modes: Island names are now localized.
• Freeform: Starting a game as a character other than Arthur, and then starting another new game as Arthur now actually starts with Arthur instead of the first character chosen.
• Survival: Hunger and Thirst survival needs now fully deplete on the easy difficulty.
• Survival: Current location is now displayed in all languages.
• Survival: Strings are no longer truncated in the Crafting Screen.
• Survival: Introduction text is no longer truncated.
• Survival: Floating phone booths no longer spawn in the Garden District.
• Survival: Islands can no longer be generated with several holes inside them.
• Survival: The "Boat Capacitors" are no longer referred to as "Power Cells" in the final statistics screen.
• All modes: Island names no longer change or are no longer missing after the first Save/Load.
• All modes: Subtitles from Arthur death screen can no longer be seen overlapping the game over screen when playing in another language than English.
• Wellie mode: The description of the mode is now completely inside the text box when playing in 21:9.
• Wellie mode: The end of round tip telling the player to enter a popper no longer persists to the next night.

Encounter Fixes

• Arthur - Cult of Jack: Looting one chest before triggering the cutscene with the fake Uncle Jack no longer causes the quest to be impossible to complete.
• Arthur - Future Perfect: Returning to the main menu as the “Get the Frammistat” objective appears no longer causes the player to load back in without an objective active.
• Arthur - An Awkward Courtship: The Cleaver no longer spawns during the first phase of the Encounter and so cannot be picked up and break progression.
• Arthur - Joy Factory: FPS no longer gets very low when near the green goo being released to the right-side of the Joy Factory.
• Arthur - Parade - Future Perfect: Dying right after talking to the director no longer causes multiple issues leading to progression breaks.
• Arthur - Slaughterer's Apprentice: Performing a save/load while the package is mounted and ready to sabotage no longer prevents mounting the package again.
• Arthur - Sandbox - Survival: NPCs cannot close the metal shutter of the rear entrance of Lawrence Residence anymore when they lose aggro and return to their position.
• Arthur - Mother's Little Helper: Performing a save/load after interacting with the diary but before defeating Mrs Chaney no longer prevents the player from completing the quest.
• Ollie - No Place like Home: Dying right after giving Victoria her pills no longer causes the player to get stuck on the Death screen.
• Ollie - The Jack-o-Bean Club: Streaming out the encounter instead of picking up the fire extinguisher no longer causes it to be non-interactive.
• Sally - So Foul and Faraday: Fixed issue preventing Nick's Hideout from being accessed on a specific worldseed.
• Sally - Don't Cry Over Tinned Milk: Dying near Lionel's shop after speaking to him no longer causes the game to crash.
• Sally - Don't Cry Over Tinned Milk: Dying near Sally's alley after crafting baby milk no longer causes the game to crash.
• Sally - Millihelen: Returning to the Main menu as the Cultists start to drink a poisoned cup, no longer causes the game to crash.
• Sally - Bad Dreams: Performing a save/load inside Mr. Ramsay's house no longer causes Sally to respawn under the terrain and die.

Xbox Only

• Added graphic options. Gamma can now be adjusted.

UWP Only

• Game now pauses when minimized.

Playstation 4 Only

• Added graphic options. Gamma can now be adjusted.
• Arthur - A Malpractice of Doctors: the game no longer frequently crashes when save game option is greyed out over an extended period of game play and navigating through the DSIR.
• Platinum Trophy is now localized.
• "Jack The Nipper" weapon electricity particle effect no longer draws a vertical line when the player swings.
• The camera no longer clips through the Bee Cannon while the player harvests bees.
• Trophy Pack for DLC is no longer labeled incorrectly.
• Balloons now have the correct texture.
• Survival: Black terrain textures no longer appear through the world on PS4.

Known issues

• We have identified an issue where the navmesh generation sometimes hits the maximum number of tiles, which can cause NPCs to behave in strange ways (including potentially blocking progression). This has been fixed on PC but is still live - although rare - on PS4 and Xbox One. It can be fixed by returning to the menu and reloading your save. We are preparing a small hotfix with the intent of fixing this issue next week.

Jul 23, 2019

Lightbearer - We Happy Few’s second DLC out July 30th!

We Happy Few - Captain Scarlett

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgnQox24hAo

Hi everyone,

We hope you enjoyed this little teaser trailer, stay tuned for the full trailer on July 30th when Lightbearer launches on Steam, GOG, Xbox One and PS4!

In this groovy thriller and second piece of DLC for We Happy Few, you play as Nick Lightbearer, notorious Wellington Wells rockstar and Joy aficionado. But Joy, sex and rock n’roll comes with a killer price.

Stay also alert for update 1.8 launching later this week on all platforms! Update 1.8 contains an array of significant fixes for the main game across all platforms but most importantly, it fixes some pesky memory issues we were having on PS4 which was causing some crashes for certain people who got dealt a specific world seed. We are glad to say we were finally able to track these down!

See you all very soon

Jun 30, 2019

How We Happy Few explores the injustice of motherhood

We Happy Few

Be warned: the following article contains major spoilers for the first and second acts of We Happy Few.

The first time you encounter Sally Boyle, We Happy Few's second playable character, it's through the eyes of a man. She strikes a dainty figure at the end of an alleyway, slick and trim in black latex and white felt, a jockey's helmet puckishly screwed down over thickly made-up elvish features. Within the game's 1960s British dystopia, Sally has become a sex and fashion icon, cast in the image of starlets like Edie Sedgwick, her apartment decorated with Pop Art prints of her own face. She's like something out of a fever dream, delightful yet abrasive and you sense, as reliable as the wind, hanging off your arm as she teases you about your clothes.

Sally's ditziness isn't entirely her own doing, however: the scene is as much a commentary on Arthur, the hapless dork doing the looking, as it is Sally. One of We Happy Few's more inspired tricks is that its protagonists perceive conversations with each other differently, the pulse of their emotions altering what is said and how. In the course of three parallel stories, played one after the other, you witness the same cutscenes from each perspective, with altered wording, performances and animations. It's tempting to say that there's no definitive account, but to my mind, the steady unfurling of the theme of censorship in Arthur's story (he once worked for the state's Department of Archives, Printing, & Recycling) makes his the least trustworthy. His impressions of Sally, specifically, are soured by resentment: the pair grew up together as foster siblings and were almost sweethearts, but fell apart when Arthur's dad coerced Sally into sleeping with him.

Jun 11, 2019

All the Nvidia RTX ray tracing and DLSS games confirmed so far

Quake II - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Katharine Castle)

The number of confirmed ray tracing games for [cms-block] and selected GTX graphics cards has just got a little bit longer. With E3 2019 in full swing, Nvidia have confirmed that both Watch Dogs Legion and the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will also be getting full ray tracing support, and in the case of Call of Duty, adaptive shading support as well.

That ray tracing games list is still pretty small, admittedly, and the number of games you can find it in right now> can almost be counted on a single hand. Indeed, a lot of confirmed RTX games are yet to receive their ray tracing and performance-boosting DLSS support, so the list below is more of a complete ‘this is how many games will have it eventually’ kind of thing than ‘these are all the games you can play with ray tracing right this very second’. Still, if you’re currently on the fence about buying one of Nvidia’s RTX 2060, RTX 2070, RTX 2080 or RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards as opposed to one of the new [cms-block] GPUs, this guide should hopefully help you decide whether ray tracing is something worth investing in. Here’s every confirmed ray tracing and DLSS game we know about so far.

(more…)

Jun 9, 2019

Price confirmed for Xbox Game Pass on PC

We Happy Few

Ahead of this evening's E3 conference, a new page on the Microsoft store confirms details and pricing for the Xbox Game Pass on PC for Windows 10 players: 4 GBP / $5 USD a month.

The pass includes a library of 100+ games to dip into (although it should be noted that the library on Xbox One is almost double that) including We Happy Few, Forza Horizon 4, Hello Neighbor, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Sea of Thieves Anniversary Edition, and State of Decay 2.

Gears 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and Ori and the Blind Forest are listed as "coming soon" to the PC library.

May 30, 2019

All the Nvidia RTX ray tracing and DLSS games confirmed so far

Quake II - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Katharine Castle)

With the arrival of Nvidia’s new GTX ray tracing driver, the number of graphics cards that can now take advantage of the tech giant’s fancy new lighting tech has grown exponentially. In addition to the four new [cms-block] cards, everyone with a 6GB GTX 1060 and up can now get a taste of that ray tracing magic. Sort of.

Alas, the number of confirmed ray tracing games is still pretty small. There have been a couple of new, notable additions to the list in recent months, including Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 and Wolfenstein: Youngblood, but even now the number of games you can find it in right now> can be counted on a single hand. The same goes for Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS tech, which is still only available on the RTX 2060, RTX 2070, RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti. So I thought I’d do the hard work for you and put everything in a nice, big list, detailing every confirmed ray tracing and DLSS game we know about so far.

(more…)

Apr 4, 2019

We Happy Few has been invaded by robots in the new DLC

We Happy Few

We Happy Few's first DLC misadventure is out today, and it's quite the departure from the drugged-up dystopia you might be familiar with. Psychedelic fascism is out, vintage alien robots are in. There's a lot of gloom mixed in with the whimsy in Wellington Wells, but in the underground robot-infested lab, things look a bit more lighthearted.

In They Came from Below, you'll be playing Roger, previously an NPC, and heading down to Doctor Faraday's secret lab with your boyfriend, James. Together you'll have to halt a robot invasion. The robots are also alien robots. Oh dear. Thank goodness, then, that the lab is also full of sci-fi weapons and gizmos. I'm sure at least one of them will help.

Wellington Wells is a cracking setting, even if I did get a bit sick of backtracking through it, but I'm all for the switch from one retrofuturistic setting to another. It's a shame it's not co-op, though, given that we've got a pair of reluctant heroes.

Unfortunately, the base game was a bit disappointing when it finally launched last year.

"The characters, the acting, and the tragedy were enough to get me to eke what fun I could out of playing the thing," Tyler said in his We Happy Few review. "We Happy Few's bugs and inconsistencies and thematic concessions make its open world tiring, survival obligatory, stealth frustrating, and combat clunky, but if you're willing to take it slow and gather lots of herbs and metal bits for crafting, it's worth exploring its mysteries."

It's seen a few updates since then, however, so it might be worth another look if it's already sitting in your library.

They Came Below is available now as part of the season pass or individually. I'm not seeing the latter on Steam, but here's the GOG version.

Apr 4, 2019

They Came from Below, available now!

We Happy Few - Captain Scarlett

The first We Happy Few DLC, They Came from Below, is available now on all platforms! Join James and Roger in this hand-crafted story of mystery and robots! Explore a fresh perspective of Wellington Wells TODAY!

You can get this DLC as a standalone here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/974570/We_Happy_Few__Roger__James_in_They_Came_From_Below/

Or as part of the Seaon Pass here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/919000/We_Happy_Few__Season_Pass/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jYCxAnvvic

Apr 3, 2019

They Came from Below will drop tomorrow at 9am ET

We Happy Few - Captain Scarlett

They Came from Below, our first DLC for We Happy Few, will drop tomorrow at 9am ET on all platforms! This DLC is included in the Season Pass and the Deluxe Edition of We Happy Few and can also be purchased as a standalone.

Stay tuned for the trailer tomorrow!