You are walking with your three explorer friends when two of them walk away on their own. You and your partner use a flare gun, noticing a giant castle. The two of you walk inside when suddenly you are knocked out. You wake up in a strange room, before noticing a walkie talkie on a nearby table...
We Were Here is a two player cooperative puzzle game developed by Total Mayhem Games and released February 3rd, 2017 for free on Steam.
You play as either the explorer or the librarian, with the other player taking on the opposite role. The explorer must complete puzzles to advance to the next room, but the explorer needs assistance from the librarian, who will have to help them solve the puzzle over the walkie talkie using books, maps, charts and various other things in the library they are in.
A sequel, We Were Here Too was released a year later on February 2nd, 2018 on Steam, and then a second sequel, We Were Here Together, was released October 10th, 2019. A third sequel, We Were Here Forever, was then released on May 10th, 2022.
A new series, We Were Here Expeditions, began in 2023, with the first part, The FriendShip being released on October 17th.
WARNING: Spoilers for the puzzles will be below.
The We Were Here series contains examples of:
- Bittersweet Ending: The original game. One of the players escapes the castle alive and well, but the other has to stay behind to hold the door open, leaving the surviving character wondering in the ending narration whether there could've been a way to get them both out.
- Brains and Brawn: The first game has this dynamic through the Librarian and the Explorer. The Librarian spends most of the story holed up in an eery but ultimately safe set of rooms, gathering information to relay to the Explorer, while the Explorer traverses the castle and uses the information given by the Librarian to solve puzzles.
- Creepy Doll: The Marionette in the Haunted Theatre. You never actually see what it looks like but it gets closer and closer to the stage over the course of the level and if the play isn't completed fast enough it will kill the librarian.
- Comm Links: The explorer and the librarian of the original We Were Here, as well as the other pairs throughout the series, communicate through the walkie talkies they both find at the start of the game.
- Deadly Euphemism: In the orginal game. Whenever the Explorer meets a grisly end the Game Over screen doesn't say they died but instead claims that "the darkness took over" or "the cold has won".
- Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of the original game, one player must stay on the pressure plate to allow the other to escape through the gate.
- Love Hurts: In We Were Here Too, both players eventually come across a room with a Summoning Ritual-looking device and a diary. Whereas the diary written by "B." is about proclaiming their love for "C.", the entry by "C." that the other player finds states that B. is going mad with their search for power and how she needs to leave before they're both hurt.
- Multiple Endings: The original game only has one ending, but subsequent games have a secret Golden Ending available if enough secret things are found throughout the run to unlock a final puzzle.
- Rise to the Challenge: One of the puzzles in We Were Here Too has one player relate how to build various cubes to the other while standing on a staircase that's quickly being consumed by lava.
- Timed Mission:
- In the original game, there are three puzzles which require that the explorer solves it before something happens that will result in their death. The first one is the rising water puzzle, the second is the frozen chess game, and the third is the Haunted Theatre where the Marionette slowly approaches.
- In the sequel, there's the staircase being consumed by lava, the sets of armor being engulfed in flames, and the jail cell above lava.
- Title Drop: Done by the Puppeteer as the final lines of We Were Here Forever.
