Impressions on Happy Wars

Recently, Toylogic released the debut trailer for their upcoming game, Happy Wars, a casual multiplayer action game available only for Xbox Live Arcade. Alongside the trailer recently shown at the 2011 Tokyo Games Show, they’ve released some more details about the game’s playable classes. From the few trailers offered and the info on their website, this cartoony hack n’ slash online romp appears to have all the fixings to be full of fun, folly, and casual battles on grand scales.

Happy Wars will be mainly an online experience, with 15 vs. 15 action. Players will battle with their over-the-top, customizable characters for dominance over enemy castles on a wide variety of terrains, such as grassy plains, fields of lava, and coral reefs on the ocean floor.  For those looking to get a bit of practice before launching themselves into the online battlefield, or just wanting to be anti-social, there will be a solo storyline full of missions for players to warm up with. The gameplay looks adorable, expansive, and insanely fun.

There will be three classes for players to choose from: warrior, mage, and cleric. The warrior is your melee tank, the mage your long range spell caster, and the cleric your buffer/healer. Each role has its own strengths and skills, and can even combine abilities with other players to create massive spells and even charge in formation. These combination skills require a great amount of teamwork and communication, something that could be an issue as many players worldwide speak either a different language or use slang that other users may not understand. Toylogic has considered this however, and has designed a simplified communication system: Players will have access to standardized dialog choices to get across simple information, with probable sentences being “attack here” and “help, I’m dead, revive me please”.  A video for more info on classes is available below.

Happy Wars also has a bit of a unique “tag” system, where Players can enter text to use as their ID tag, and others with the same ID phrase will be teamed together against people of the opposite or enemy tag. An example of this is dog lovers vs. cat lovers.  While it’s essentially just naming each team this could add greater purpose to gameplay, with players battling for not only to win but for bragging rights. Any sided problem could potentially be battled out over Happy Wars. I know I look forward to the Star Wars vs. Star Trek battles!

From just the trailers themselves, Happy Wars looks to be a fantastic title. With the balance of what looks to be well-thought gameplay, its casual look and feel, and its unique tag systems, the game is set to be something Xbox Live needs: a casual and fun multiplayer experience.  No emphasis on terrorists, war, zombies, or depressing themes, just good old fashioned cartoony entertainment. I’m personally looking forward to it, with hopes that it’s a breath of fresh air to its serious, competitive counterparts. Happy Wars is not yet rated and is set to release sometime in 2012, at an unannounced price.