In an update today, We Happy Few developers announced that they need a few more months to polish up the highly anticipated dystopian survival game before it would be ready for retail release later this year. The game was originally slated to release in April 2018, and is now set to release sometime this summer.
We Happy Few hit Kickstarter in June 2016, and has been in Early Access since July 2016. According to the developers, the game is now “content complete” but needs more fine-tuning and polish before it reaches public hands. In a developer update video, Chief Operating Officer Sam Abbott and Creative Director Guillaume Provost sat down to discuss these changes and explain the reasons behind the delay.
The big changes are in the first few hours of the game, focusing on the narrative elements of one of the main characters, Arthur. In the video, the developers also show off a new story teaser and highlight a new main character, Sally. These story changes might also help the game tie into the film adaptation as well.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCb7GIwiUxw[/embed]
Along with this announcement, Compulsion Games also announced that for the time being, the game will no longer be purchasable through Steam starting at the end of January, and previous buyers of the game will be eligible for a refund, regardless of playtime. Currently, We Happy Few sports a hefty price tag of $50.99, a high price for an early access game.
The price increased back in April 2017, when it jumped from $29.99 to its current price with the game’s “Life in Technicolor” update. The developers acknowledged in this recent update that the price point was a bit too high for the early access version of the game that would not receive any more updates until the launch of the full game.
Pushing the release date back, while not always an easy thing to do, is a good choice if the alternative means releasing an incomplete or unpolished game. We Happy Few developers have always been transparent with their weekly updates, and this open dialogue with the community makes the delay more understandable.
We Happy Few is set to release for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in summer 2018.
Source: Compulsion Games