This is exactly what Joy does in We Happy Few. Soma, in A Brave New World, is an antidepressant and hallucinogenic drug that removes all feelings of unhappiness in a person. Games are about personal experiences and player autonomy, not the single experience of a book with many interpretations.

On top of all this, We Happy Few captures the experience of reading the book in a way only a video game can. These main themes include the use of the drug called Joy (soma), downers sequestered to specific areas (the Savage Reservation in New Mexico), and the way human nature (like violence and sex) are framed. We Happy Few captures the main themes of the book, as well as the experience of Huxley’s world and fictional narrative. There are of course other somewhat classic novels, like Sherlock Holmes and Alice In Wonderland, that have their fair share of video game adaptations.īut I don’t believe either are quite as faithful, thus far, as We Happy Few is to Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World.

This is the first time that a classic novel everyone in America ends up reading in high school, is faithfully adapted to a video game without compromising any of the major themes. However, I will say that We Happy Few does it quite successfully and from a unique source material. Video games based on books are not the most wild ideas out there, and they are certainly a great deal more successful than when a video game is based on a movie.

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