Compulsion on the art of We Happy Few

We caught up with Compulsion Games' art director Whitney Clayton to learn more about the effort that's gone into the visual design of the game.

"It's 1960s England and this is a setting that I personally love. I grew up with a lot of British media and television and our narrative director from whom the world also gets a lot of direction from, he knows a lot about British history."

The art style is very vibrant and iconic, something that could be perceived as a clash with the procedural nature of the game itself.

"We're always struggling with that, so we've come up with a lot of hacks to try to make it not feel 'samey'. The artists have created beautiful assets and there's all sort of tools that the programmers have created to give control to the artist to allow them to manipulate the system themselves."

Clayton also explained how artists and programmers work close together at the studio and that this is what's made this merger of technology and the art style possible.