Developed and published by Total Mayhem Games, the We Were Here series consists of four games that invite you and your partner to Castle Rock. Getting lost in a mysterious castle only to fall into various traps? Sounds like a perfect pastime to me!
The series includes We Were Here, We Were Here Too, We Were Here Together and the recently released We Were Here Forever. The games are meant for two players who must communicate to solve various riddles and puzzles, avoid falling into deadly traps and uncover the mysteries of the castle you find yourselves in.
Castle Rock is teeming with secrets and creatures that are watching you from the shadows. Work together to find a way out or rely only on your own strength, the choice is yours.
In the first game, you have to find shelter as soon as possible to avoid being swept away by a dangerous storm. But, upon finding yourself in Castle Rock, you become entangled and imprisoned in the past of this mysterious place. The warmth of life had long left the halls of this place, and it is up to you to find what happened. Getting into the first game can cause mixed emotions until you figure out how everything works.
The communication between players takes place thanks to a walkie-talkie. The game requires both players to have a working PC-compatible microphone and an internet connection to serve as each other’s eyes and ears and share what is going on at the moment. Each entry into the series gives players two different roles to fulfill, for example, a librarian and a researcher (based on the first game).
At first, you might find this method of communication funny but over time puzzles will become more complicated and you will even encounter certain riddles that are time-sensitive and require you to work fast with your partner. You will have to explain what you see around you to your friend in a succinct fashion so that your partner can begin to solve the related puzzle.
In my own experience, I have found out that sometimes it is more difficult to explain to a friend what you see than to drive a car:
– Ever seen an alien with one eye and crooked legs?
– No?..
– Well, now you have to find one!
Situations like these will give your language mastery a stress test and even a comical way of describing what you see and gesturing wildly can make it easier for you to press forward. Explaining your surroundings is the key to progressing and leaving the location.
The next game in the series will vaguely remind you of your actions in the first title. You have to help your comrades that have sent a distress signal from somewhere in the gloomy Antarctic. You play as the two remaining explorers that must work together to carry out a rescue mission. To do that, you will have to find your way from the explorers’ base camp to the location of the signal flare.
At first, you will have nothing to rely on but your fast wits and a couple of walkie-talkies. Only your observation skills, smart interactions and communication will help you escape Castle Rock again. Like before, you will have to explore the halls and dungeons of the castle, make an escape plan, solve puzzles together while trying to unearth the mysteries of this place. Whether you succeed or not, depends only on you.
However, it is not enough to leave the confines of the castle, for outside you will find the ruins of Rockbury. Much like it was with the castle, you and your companion will have to discover the story of this city and its inhabitants that rose against the king.
The events of all four games take place in the same location at roughly the same time. As you explore more of its mysteries, you will learn about the King and his kingdom, about the Jester that was always next to the ruler and seemed to whisper something into his ear.
Playing through the series we’ll see the story unfold: the King decided to betray his kingdom to gain unbelievable power. By doing so, he doomed his family and his people to a terrible fate. As a vicious winter descended on the kingdom, people started to leave in a hurry. The royal family tried to stop it before it was too late and gave everything to take down the mad King but they failed. The heroes perished and the King became one with the castle.
As it was in the three previous games, the puzzles in We Were Here Forever start off slow and easy, ramping up as you go through the game. Going through the series, my colleague and I tried to approach everything carefully.
There were moments when an answer was right in front of our faces but we stubbornly refused to use it and persisted in thinking that we needed something else.
However, the game features too many moments where you are standing around and waiting for your partner to finish their part of the puzzle. At one point, I started walking around in circles waiting while my partner was done. In those cases when the game demands more complex solutions, the waiting can be a little boring.
The latest entry into the series also features the hints system with each giving you indirect advice on what to do to proceed. They sound something like this – “Look around, maybe you will find something interesting!”. For the most part, we didn’t need them but the hints came in handy when we were lost and were unsure what we were even looking for.
There were still some minor awkward moments that could get in the way of your playthrough:
- Large objects kept blocking our field of view (seems to have been fixed in the latest patch)
- Some puzzles didn’t count right away
- Small freezes between transitions
- Broken cutscenes
Is the story truly done with We Were Here Forever? Can you two escape together or are you trapped in the castle forever? Does one even truly escape Castle Rock? I don’t want to spoil the ending of the game series, but I want to note that developers tried very hard to keep and even raise the bar with the latest title.
The We Were Here series is a number of interesting, fun co-op puzzles. The plot features enough intrigue for you to keep guessing until the very end. There is a huge variation and complexity in the puzzles that will have you wracking your brain.
