A Grate Time (Source: Total Mayhem Games) The Bigger Picture
It is rare for a puzzle in We Were Here Forever to overstay its welcome. In the first two hours of gameplay alone, my partner and I traversed a timed floor puzzle, reactivated an engine, deciphered a bizarre code machine, and even recreated several dioramas of the history of Castle Rock. It's refreshing not to see a foreboding red ring around the screen when your character falls off of a platform for stepping on the wrong tile. It allows players to progress through the puzzles at their own pace. The lack of an absolute fail state is something of a boon. The game avoids bogging itself down with the familiar ultimatums of death or damage, occasionally making use of countdowns to add frenetic energy to its challenges. Perhaps your partner will be stuck in a maze and you'll have to guide them from your vantage point above. One explorer might have access to a codebook, while the other might have to make sense of a console while being fed information by their partner. Mine to Explore (Source: Total Mayhem Games) One Big Escape Roomīetween them, both players will have a complete picture of any given puzzle. The developers are keen to let the puzzles speak for themselves and, given the strength and variance of the challenges on offer, they are clearly right to do so. With only basic movement, the radio, the inventory system, and the action button, one quickly learns that there are no complex player mechanics in We Were Here Forever. It makes for an extremely atmospheric experience. By recontextualising player communication within the boundaries of the game itself, We Were Here Forever is able to effectively captivate its players through what amounts to an act of game design sorcery. Your partner will be greeted with a blinking red light and the dulcet sounds of your voice. However, through the use of the humble hand radio, Total Mayhem has identified and capitalised upon what is, unquestionably, the most salient mechanic of any cooperative game: communication. In the age of Discord, this may seem like something of a gimmick. Your task is simple: escape with the help of your partner.īefore anything else, the game introduces you to its most important mechanic: your walkie-talkie. We Were Here Forever begins by dropping you and your partner in a pair of parallel jail cells in the middle of a mysterious and trap-ridden castle surrounded by frozen wastes. An Icy Reception (Source: Steam) A Cold Open This game was reviewed with a code provided by the publisher. Though marred by the occasional bug and a somewhat clunky hints system, Total Mayhem Games' newest offering not only stands tall on the basis of its gameplay but also deftly weaves its narrative into its puzzle elements, making for a unique and worthwhile experience.
However, it is far more than a mere reiteration, offering challenges of sufficient variety and ingenuity to keep even the hungriest puzzle-glutton satisfied. Like its predecessors, We Were Here Forever requires two players. Without it, critically acclaimed cooperative puzzlers like It Takes Two, A Way Out and even We Were Here (Total Mayhem Games' debut title) may well have looked very different. Though far from perfect, it created an early template for the genre, serving to define the modern take on this style of game. It was with Portal 2's multiplayer mode, perhaps, that the idea of the cooperative puzzler became baked into our shared consciousness. Two's Company (Source: Total Mayhem Games)Ĭooperative puzzlers are, by their very nature, extremely ambitious projects.
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