Whilst there is certainly joy to be had in solving puzzles, most of the entertainment when playing Happy Game comes from seeing what the notoriously quirky minds of Amanita Design have concocted in the gameвЂ™s thirty-or-so seamlessly connected and increasingly horrifying vignettes. Most of the puzzles are (literal) childвЂ™s play but there were one or two that were abstract enough to cause a few head-scratching moments. Instead, Happy Game, like many of Czech developer Amanita DesignвЂ™s other games such as Chuchel and Samorost, fosters a more experimental and trial-and-error approach to gameplay encouraging the player to poke and prod (and sometimes stretch, mutilate and eviscerate) on-screen characters and items in order to see what reacts and what doesnвЂ™t with no written dialogue or instruction. There is no inventory, combining of items or dialogue trees as is typical for the genre.

Happy Game plays like any point and click adventure using the mouse cursor to move your character an infantile boy of toddler age around various 2D environments that are the psychedelic manifestations of his nightmares in the hope of finding and rescuing several of his favourite toys. Bunnies being decapitated, little ant-like mites being impaled on a skewer, heart-shaped characters being goaded and prodded until they explode in a bloody fountain. ItвЂ™s a warning to prospective players that despite its name and seemingly pleasant veneer, Happy Game is more akin to a horror experience and probably isnвЂ™t the ideal title to sit your five-year-old niece or nephew in front of as their first foray into the point and click genre.

Happy Game opens with a message that it is, in fact, not a happy game.

Happy game monsters