Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory Previews

If you’re interested in a humorous dystopian RPG based on a fairly popular tabletop game, then you have Black Shamrock and Cyanide Studio’s Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory to look forward to. Set in a retro-futuristic world and featuring a real time with pause combat system, the game is scheduled to launch later this year. A couple of media outlets recently had a chance to play through some sample missions of Paranoia, and as a result we can now check out their impressions.

First, there’s Den of Geek with a preview that lists October 3, 2019 as the game’s release date, which has not been officially confirmed at this point. A sample:

Jumping in at level four, the game felt quite difficult, but that could just be because we skipped the tutorial stage and weren’t really sure which attacks and items were the best ones to use. We had time to try level one a little later, and after that everything made a lot more sense. Well… the world still felt utterly barmy, but our objectives and our skills became easier to understand.

What really stands out is the game’s sense of humour, with gags (of various levels of darkness) packed into every possible sentence. This combines nicely with the sci-fi setting and the lo-fi feel of the game’s retro graphics, with everything blending together into a tongue-in-cheek world that feels like a sibling to the likes of Red Dwarf. Maybe if the Starbug crew ended up in an Orwellian nightmare, it would feel a little like this.

Then, there’s Hardcore Gamer with a preview focused on the game’s combat and exploration:

The supposed humor and black-comedy antics might not be as prevalent or apparent as you might expect, but Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory still makes the effort to provide a real-time RPG that employs both tactical cover-based actions and thoughtful decision-making, as players scout out various parts of the base under the supervision of Friend Computer. The gist of the game’s progression is that players take on varying objectives set out by the base’s AI and this often takes on the form of clearing out a set number of rooms and sectors in order to reach a pivotal spot. While it may not entirely be a “fog-of-war” style approach when it comes to moving tactically through the complex, given visibility is limited to the only room you currently reside in, players are required to prepare themselves for any form of encounter that may be lurking in wait past the next door or even around the corner of that very same long-stretch of corridor.