We Happy Few [official site], you may recall, is an upcoming crowdfunded first-person social survival game from Contrast devs Compulsion Games. Besides its vibrant aesthetic, it poses an interesting premise: you’re trapped in an alternate 1960s England where everyone in town is high on a hallucinatory happy drug called Joy but you’re just coming off it. Problem is, this town hates “downers” and if they realise you’re one there’ll be hell to pay. It’s sort-of BioShock, sort-of Orwell’s 1984>, sort-of Huxley’s A Brave New World>.

We Happy Few is heading to Early Access in July, Complusion announced at E3, and they’ve shared a look at its opening sequence too:

… [visit site to read more]

Compulsion – the studio behind 2013’s cabaret shadow platformer Contrast – have semi-announced their next project.

The details on offer at the moment are scant, with even the name a mystery, but the developers confirm that the game will not be a sequel to Contrast:

“We haven’t ruled out doing one in the future, but after so long working on Contrast, we wanted to make something fresh. Something new and exciting. It involves masks, drugs and memory loss, but we swear it’s not a swinger’s party.”

… [visit site to read more]

An appropriate title indeed. ‘Contrast‘ refers to the fact this platformer (of sorts) involves switching between light and shadow in order to solve puzzles, and to the disparity between the glitz and glamour of old Paris’ surface and the thuggery and domestic disharmony beneath such Moulin Rouge trappings. Sadly, and unintentionally, it’s all too easy to take it to mean the contrast between Contrast’s appealing style and concept, and its humdrum, chore-like reality. (more…)