'We Happy Few' is One Part Pleasantville, One Part They Live

Compulsion Games has released one of the most intriguing (and terrifying) trailers of PAX East with the announcement of their next major game, We Happy Few. Little is known about the title aside from it taking place in an alternate-history 1960's Dystopia filled with crazed perma-smiling psychopaths, weapon crafting and open-world exploration.

But from the looks of the trailer, the game definitely looks like one part Pleasantville, one part They Live, with a generous amount of Invasion of The Body-snatchers just to round it out. We Happy Few has definitely left a favorable first-impression that could last them until its projected release sometime late next year(?).

And maybe a smidge of The Stepford Wives because, hey why not?

The theme of deceptive geniality of early 1960's Americana is one of the most alluring and well-traveled settings of modern gaming, with titles such as Bioshock, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified and the Fallout series blazing the trail.  We Happy Few appears to be another installment in this recurring aesthetic, a world of tie-dyed bell-bottoms and nightmarish cults of majority pulled straight out of a Shirley Jackson novel. The game is still early in development, but we here at Awesome-Robo HQ are anticipating it all the same!

OOLYMPACS

Director and animator Johnny Wood's OOLYMPACS is a one-minute visual espresso shot of Web 1.0 era animation that conjures up nightmarish comparisons to Teletoon's pioneering 3D animated series Reboot and Graham Young's Nintendo: A Sad Story.

This isn't even my final form.

I think what really does it for me about this video, besides the hilariously out-of-sync audio and grainy flourish of pixelated colors, is the deliberately exaggerated body animations that manage to be just on the cusp of believability before nose-diving into horrific contortionistic nonsense. This rightfully deserves to be buried in the 4 a.m. time-slot on Adult Swim.

Movie Hipster Kits By Alizée Lafon

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French filmmaker and graphic designer Alizée Lafon created this delightful series of posters, deconstructing movies into their most iconic accessories, presented in a manner reminiscent of men's fashion magazine style guides, and vintage ones at that.

These minimalist posters were inspired by movies with cult followings: Vintage 007 movies, the Cohen brothers most memorable piece: The Big Lebowski, the works of W.S. Anderson like Moonrise Kingdom and of course, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Check out the rest of her amazing posters after the break, and don't forget to pick up a print over on her Curioos storefront!

Sundae Stroll

Student animator Christina Lu has a thing for classic cartoons, and she pulls it off awesomely with her short 'Sundae Stroll.'  Telling the story of a little pup named Bruce, who decides to treat himself to some ice cream. Because, hey, it's the little things in life we look forward to.  Sadly, poor Bruce has several obstacles thrown in his way.

Lu combined old-fashioned, silent-era cartoon, yet modern looking visuals with not so retro Nintendo-esque audio (well, relatively speaking, compared to the visuals).  Altogether it has a real light-hearted, and fun appeal.

The Pulpy Art of Ralph Niese

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Liepzieg based artist Ralph Niese put a smile on my face with his ridiculously fun art, channeling decades of pulp comic books, low budget VHS tape covers, smutty novels, 80's toy boxart and more into a really playful, tongue in cheek style that doesn't take itself too seriously.

From an artists standpoint, it looks like Ralph decided to visually take himself back in time and emulate what it would be like to have been an illustrator working in the 60's, 70's and 80's, complete with garish colors, cheesy fonts and insane premises. Aside from having that style completely nailed down, he's also ridiculously prolific in his output with hundreds of pieces in his gallery. Check out a small selection of his vast gallery after the break!

The Cats Of Mars Meet The Toy Car

Faux retro is the name of the game with this charming little short by Jacob Stalhammar, with it's usage of crackly public domain music and vintage, children's book style animation. The narration has a Seuss-ian rhyme to it, which goes well with the theme of space cats and sentient mars rovers. If you ever read Scholastic or Little Golden Books back in the day, this short will feel oddly familiar, in the best way possible.