General Information
A Spooky, Comedic & Intriguing Sandbox
The swamps of Florida offer a damp, putrid, murky setting and armed only with a dildo, I mean flashlight, and a mini-golf club you journey throughout the park, attempting to survive the ordeal by avoiding gators, automatons and demonic drug-addled rodent mascots.
With jumpscares-a-plenty HFL (HappyFunland) leads you around some enjoyable attractions, all of which have sandbox-like functionality for you to destroy and search around to your heart's content. There is also an escape room vibe in most of the areas that massively appeals to my puzzle-solving brain.
With mini-games involving tolerating motion-sickness inducing rides, minigolf holes, smashing things, finding keys, avoiding boobytraps and maintaining your sanity: this game attempts to distract and bamboozle you throughout whilst keeping you on your toes with overarching demonic story beats.
Throughout your journey, you are in direct contact with Larry who pretty much explains everything you need to know and punctuates crescendos and certain points so you can confirm that you are on the right track. The one-sided conversation fits its needs and keeps you gripped for the next tidbit of information until Larry goes radio silent.
At points, I felt a little too left to my own devices, but I soon figured my way around. It's not difficult, just unnerving to discover your next terror-riddled moment, be it being chased and attacked by the numerous automatons, or being stabbed to death in a toilet-block by a giant rat. It's all fun and games at HappyFunland!
Linear But True To A Themepark
The game funnels you around the park using the typical gaming tropes of a tipped-over object to block your path, and using spooky floating balloons to guide you around. There are also little orange rodent souvenirs scattered around that I used to figure out my next direction, and breaking them adds to a collectibles tally, as does your stroke count each time you sink a ball on a minigolf hole.
You find tape recorders in various places that have messages left by the maintenance guy. He has hints, tips and strategies that you need to observe to progress. For example, towards the beginning, you get trapped in a gift shop and the only way out is to listen to his musings on how annoying it is to repeat these instructions for every nooby that works there. Heeding his messages and warnings will swiftly get you to the next areas, but only if you keep your wits about you and keep an eye out for creepy things that are poised to jump out and attack you.
Some areas are not visible until you have achieved certain criteria. For example, getting to a specific place triggers a wall vanishing and a new path becoming visible, but without meeting those steps that area is not visible, so making sure to backtrack when stuck is a viable strategy for completing the game.
Quite a few of the rides serve to stir you up ready to take on the next area, but some, such as the Pirate Boat Tour allow you to flex your shooting muscles, with unlimited ammunition to blast targets and dangerous entities.
I enjoyed the switch to gunplay, as trawling around with a club and a flashlight was getting quite repetitious, so the ability to have a bit of a blast-a-thon in a new location was much needed.
Toilet Humor is Not for Everyone, Woefully Short
There is plentiful innuendo, over-the-top scenes and drug references; and I loved them all. There are furry animal strip clubs, crack-smoking vermin and some sketchy automatons, but the flow and feel of the game seem apt given its PEGI 18 rating.
HFL only manages a 2.5-3-hour run-time, so it feels like it's over far too quickly. I think that if the game had more post-game content, drilled down the controls and perhaps bolstered its length to the 5-hour mark I would be far more inclined to give this a higher score, but overall this game is entertaining for what it is and I had an absolute blast!
I would not hesitate to recommend this game though because of its humorous approach towards Disney, its fun and jumpscare-ability, but I understand that some could find the low-brow humor too basic and unenticing. I would argue that the puerile tongue-in-cheek approach while daft and entertaining, gives an otherwise basic game a fantastic theme that is woven throughout it and gels it all together into a short but sweet, and partially terrifying, jaunt.
