We Were Here is a co-op Horror/Adventure Escape game from Total Mayhem Games, where all you have is a walkie talkie to talk to your team member, and each other’s wits, to get out of the castle you’re both stranded in.
The gameplay is divided in two roles, the Librarian and the Explorer. As a Librarian you’re in charge of helping your team mate by solving puzzles, reading maps, searching through books, browsing paintings etc. As the Explorer you solve puzzles together with your team mate, run around, open gates, and almost die a lot.
This mechanic of being in two different places in the game but having to communicate to each other through voice to solve the puzzles makes for a very fun bonding experience.
One of the Librarian rooms.
I have to go ahead and say that the UI is not great. It’s very chunky and overall too big. It distracts from the beautiful art of the game and makes it feel a bit dated. Of course, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. I know UI issues a lot of times come down to personal preferences or what’s in fashion at the moment, but the size and look of the mouse pointer, bars, and the player’s “hand” contrast heavily with the delicate nature of a lot of the puzzles the player is working on.
If a player decides to play with the textures on low for performance reasons, be warned that the puzzle involving books will be hard to finish since the books will be pretty much unreadable. The game is still in it’s early days though, so here’s to hoping they’ll remodel the GUI and fix some readability issues.
Ye olde loading bar
Going into the user experience part of the game, I have to mention that We Were Here at this point is still having some server problems, bugs and general issues, such as the walkie talkies not working. When I played this game through with A we were in the same room, but as a substitute you could also play it with a friend through Discord or Steam.
I think that what this game does beautifully is force the players to develop a common language with each other. It has very specific visual puzzles and it makes the player think visually, get very descriptive and a lot of fun ensues from trying to describe symbols, rooms, places and paintings. The choice of using the walkie talkies (pressing V to talk) is very soundly justified at it makes the player feel immersed in the experience without encumbering them too much.
There were a few problems relating to feedback, namely on the chess puzzle, when the Librarian has to rewind a film, yet has access to turning the handle before the power is on, and then there is virtually no audio feedback on actions going forward. If a game is geared to VR, especially, the feedback has to be clear, immediate, and concise. Overall this is what We Were Here most suffers from.
In the same puzzle, there should also have been given the chance for the player to star over (ie. dying). The puzzle is so long that, understandably, the time between the start and the end with the Explorer freezing to death had to be too, but if you make a mistake, you should be able to start the puzzle over without quitting and reloading the game or waiting 5 minutes for the player to die. You never really want to hear your team mate say “Are you dead yet...?”.
This is exactly what they solved on the last big puzzle, at the theater, and it worked really well. The final puzzle is absolutely delicious to play. I have 0 faults to point here, since the purpose of the game is clear, the setting is beautiful and the puppet character is terrifying as it looms closer and closer to the Librarian as the play advances. It’s definitely one of the most rewarding moments of the game, and I don’t want to spoil anymore of it.
Overall, We Were Here works quite well as a virtual escape room, testing players under stress and how good they are at communicating with each other. Apart from some UI ubiquity and feedback problems, it has a lot of fun and challenging moments, and I’d be very interested in playing this game and similar titles in the future.
