Tiny Beds in Every House

Am I my brother's keeper? Am I?

I recently needed to come down off a year-plus of Elden Ring¹ and decided to start a game I’d bought but never really played: We Happy Few.

[I will do my best to avoid spoilers here! Even if you haven’t played, feel free to read on.]

The premise of the We Happy Few is bone-chilling: Through a series of alt-history tugged threads, the Germans succeed in overrunning Britain during World War II. When that happens, one isle community—our fictional setting, Wellington Wells—does something that persuades the occupying forces to leave them in peace.

What that thing is—the “Very Bad Thing,” as the people call it—becomes fairly clear early on: in fear for their lives, the community of Wellington Wells rounded up all the children under the age of thirteen and put them on trains to Germany, never to be seen again.

Horrified by what they did, the citizens turn to a drug, Joy, that sends them into blissful, compliant oblivion. Almost two decades later—after a series of atompunk technological advances—the Joy is laced into the drinking water and available for free on every streetcorner. The residents wander dreamily around their village in manically smiling white masks, exchanging pleasantries with their neighbors and talking about very little at all.