We Happy Few - Season Pass

I came into the We Happy Few Season Pass expecting minor footnotes to a flawed main game, and left genuinely surprised by how much Compulsion Games used these chapters to course-correct. The three DLC stories abandon the open-world survival loop of the base game almost entirely, trading crafting, hunger meters, and procedural districts for linear, handcrafted episode design. That is either the best or worst thing about this pass, depending on what you liked about Wellington Wells in the first place. The first chapter, They Came From Below, follows houseboys Roger Bacon and James Maxwell on a pulpy alien-invasion romp through an underground laboratory. Roger carries a ray gun and the player contends with hostile robots, a welcome swap from the street Bobbies and Joy-addled Wellies of the main campaign. The banter between the two leads lands more consistently than most of the base game's dialogue, and a quietly sincere romantic subplot between the pair gives the whole thing a warmth that Compulsion's writing team does well when given space to breathe. The second chapter, Lightbearer, centers on Wellington Wells' drug-soaked rockstar Nick Lightbearer, who wakes up surrounded by evidence that he might be the city's serial killer. Combat here is replaced almost entirely with guitar-based mechanics: serenading fans to turn them into shields, knocking out crowds with power chords, and throwing golden records as throwable puzzle tools. It is an unusually creative approach to a character whose whole identity is sonic, and the writing carries real momentum through a story that is essentially a guilt-trip wrapped in sixties glam. The caveat is that it clocks in at two to three hours with no replay incentive, and audio bugs that were present at launch were not fully resolved. The final chapter, We All Fall Down, is the clear standout. It follows Victoria Byng, the closest thing the base game had to a villain, as she deals with Joy withdrawal and a Wellington Wells in freefall. She carries a whip for vertical traversal and melee, and a dart gun for stealth takedowns and disabling security systems. The pacing feels closest to an immersive sim, with small environmental puzzles and a narrative that genuinely closes out the Wellington Wells story with more weight than the main game's own ending managed. Reviewers who found the earlier two chapters too slight tended to cite this one as justification for the whole pass. The combined runtime across all three sits around eight hours, and the tonal jump from open-world survival to linear storytelling is jarring if you go in expecting more of the same. Who is this for? Players who loved the world and writing of We Happy Few but found the base game's open-world systems bloated and repetitive will get the most out of this. Anyone who bounced off Wellington Wells entirely, or who only cared about crafting and survival mechanics, will find the Season Pass an awkward fit. Approach it as three short narrative games that happen to share an engine, and the expectations align much better with what actually shows up on screen.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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