Happy Wars Brings Free-To-Play To XBLA

Happy Wars is headed to Xbox Live Arcade sometime this fall and, good news for you cheap-Os in the audience, the game will be completely free-to-play. Sure, you'll be able to spend some real world cash on various bits of cosmetics and what have you but, as a game itself, Happy Wars will be XBLA's first legitimate free-to-play title to date.

A large-scale multiplayer battle game, Happy Wars pits two teams of 15 against one another on a massive battlefield of adorable destruction. At first glance, I couldn't help but feel like I was staring at some random scenes from PlayStation's cake-chmping multiplayer game, Fat Princess. The view of the battlefield is the same, most of the combat involves running at an enemy and spamming the attack button, and even the graphics are extremely reminiscent of the PS3's strategy title. But that's pretty much where the similarities end.

Take a look at this trailer and you'll see what I mean. Happy Wars features a billion ways to customize your warrior, it looks like additional items and spells will be available and, do my eyes deceive me or did that one scene look like a guy was controlling a turret? Also, you can make your character look like a mummy-chef-dog. That alone makes Happy Wars worth checking out, in my mind.

Happy Wars will be a free download to all Xbox Gold subscribers when it launches later this year. According to a posting from Play XBLA, Happy Wars will also feature team tactics, a cooperative mode and single player mission, as well as regular releases of even more content.