creepypasta Harry's Happy World!

[zork269 4]

 

Story:
In the early 1990s, there was a software company called EduWare that published crummy educational games for children. I specifically remember this one game called “Harry’s Happy World.†The premise was pretty simple -- you play as a grown-up named Harry, who has a job and a family. As you played, you needed to find ways to keep Harry happy while balancing all the things adults have to do. It was just like real life.

Or, so I thought.

The game was intended to teach kids the values and responsibilities of adulthood in a computer simulator. But, shortly after its release, the game was recalled from the market as hundreds of complaints were filed against the company. Since then, EduWare labored to keep knowledge of their failed project hidden from the public light, until they were sued and went bankrupt in 2001. Don’t bother web searching for their site -- it’s been taken down.

The game began innocuously enough; bright colors, cartoonish characters, and some pretty hilarious dialogue. At first, it looked like just one big joke -- like real life. All you did was go to work, go shopping, mow the lawn, pay the bills ... Piece of cake, I thought.

But then the game began to behave very strangely. It gave me some error messages, then graphic corruptions, and then the game crashed into a blue screen. Whenever I recovered the game from one of its crashes, everything about it just kept getting ... more twisted. More insane. Eventually, I couldn't handle it, so I just stopped playing.

Later I learned that hundreds of children who played this game have reported nightmares. Some have been prescribed medication their entire lives for the horrifying things they witnessed in the game.

I was one of them.

Three weeks ago, while I was sorting through junk in my garage, I found the disk to “Harry’s Happy World.†Immediately, I wanted to break the disc in half and burn it, but decided against it. Instead, I cleaned up the disk and put it in my drive. Wouldn’t you know, it actually plays. Mostly.

I have meant to upload this game for weeks now, but I’ve just always hesitated to actually do it. I want to forget it and move on, and yet I just feel like if I show the world this horrid thing that destroyed my childhood and has kept me on Prozac for twenty years -- that even caused me to attempt suicide two years ago -- it might help me to find some resolution.

What I’ve uploaded so far are just fragments of the game -- the file was corrupt when I found it, so there are substantial portions missing. I’m still working on repairing the data, but I think there is enough here for you to play through and get a substantial idea exactly how fucked up this supposed “children’s game†really was, and why the company was shut down. Let me know if you would like to see the game in its entirety, and I will do my best to recover the rest of the data.

This is my first and only warning: please play “Harry’s Happy World†only at your own risk.

Genre: A children’s game, but seriously ... this is not for children.

Demo Time: 10-20 minutes.

Game Progression:
* Story: 30%
* Maps: 97%
* Sound effects/music: 30%
* Character sprites: 50%
* Dialogue: 45 %

A few of the important characters:
* Harry: An upstanding citizen of Happy Town, his sole purpose in life is constant happiness.
* Harold: Harry’s best friend and reclusive writer.
* Helen: Harry’s wife. He lives to please her.
* Haley: Harrry’s co-worker ... and something else.

Credits:
* AABattery for Single Save File script
* Seer UK & OriginalWij for Fixed Picture script
* Yanfly Engine Ace - Parallax Lock v1.00
* Hime for Custom Event Trigger script
* Yanfly Engine Ace - Button Common Events v1.00
* Simple Diagonal Movement 1.0 by Shaz
* Word Wrapping Message Boxes, by: KilloZapit
* Galv's Move Route Extras
* Yanfly Engine Ace - Ace Message System v1.05
* Skip Title Screen by JV Master
* Fullscreen++ v2.2 for VX and VXace by Zeus81
* Backspace for Window_NameInput by Gambit
* Map Effects v1.4.1 for VX and VXace by Zeus81
* Galv's Cam Control
* Yanfly Engine Ace - Stop All Movement v1.00

Screenshots:

Features:
* Mood meter
Indicates your happiness. When the game begins, Harry is happy. But when you’re an adult, things happen -- you step on a bug, you read a sad poem, your wife cheats on you -- that make your sad, and your mood meter drops. It is up to you to find ways to be happy. If you are sad ... the game begins to malfunction.

Known Issues:
* Sometimes the menu becomes screwy, background will vanish.
* Some transfer points might guide to wrong location, since the game relies heavily on parallel maps.
* Occasional demonic possession of your computer.

Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mtzlxulkya9qo6f/Harry%27s%20Happy%20World%21.exe?dl=0

Edited March 15, 2016 by zork269

[Tarq 746]

Moving to the Gaming Lounge as you have a demo.

 

Hope you keep working on this, its a really cool project!