Developer/publisher Amanita Design

Format PC, Switch (both tested)

Release Out now

As the opening content disclaimer puts it, Happy Game is not a happy game. Talk about understatement: not since the provincial bleakness of Sally Wainwright’s Happy Valley has the titular adjective been used so ironically. Jaromir Plachy’s gleefully malevolent adventure first took root as a way for him to let off creative steam during Chuchel’s long development – and this, which has itself taken seven years to reach fruition, often feels like that game reflected in the very darkest of mirrors. Taking place within the imagination of a frightened boy, it is a satanically potent journey through a series of short, strange and frequently grisly vignettes – and though the results are more likely to provoke disgust than laughter, you may be surprised (and, perhaps, appalled) at just how often you’re amused by the gruesome tasks you’re set here. Put it this way: those upset by the sequence where It Takes Two’s protagonists rip their daughter’s beloved toy elephant limb from limb should probably give it a swerve.

Not that this poor mite is afforded the same consideration. Thanks to a small but pivotal change of verb, the boy is pulled against his will through these nightmares. While you can guide him directly using a controller’s right analogue stick or the WASD or arrow keys, everything else must be grabbed with a handshaped cursor. Indeed, it works better still if you do as the game’s first (and only) instruction suggests and use it on the boy himself, physically hauling him along for the ride, even as he expresses whimpering reluctance to go any farther. It’s a provocative touch – point-andclick becoming point-and-drag – that introduces a pang of guilt that you’re the one forcing the poor lad into these terrifying scenarios. A large part of horror’s appeal is that it enables you to confront your fears, albeit in a safe, controlled environment. This place, whether a dream or not, feels overwhelmingly unsafe, even before your interjections make it more dangerous still.