In a mild panic, I wake up in the middle of the night in a cell, surrounded by the sound of a bitter, icy wind blowing through this dark castle. It’s an introduction that we’ve seen countless times in games, but We Were Here Forever takes a slightly different approach. No dialogue or explanation of how you ended up in this cage, but simply an open door in front of you and a walkie-talkie on the table next to you. Figure out for yourself what to do!
We Were Here Forever is the digital equivalent of an escape room and fans of the franchise are now familiar with the concept. Through communication with your companion, who is usually in another room, you must try to solve various puzzles. One of the most important features of the We Were Here games, and also one of the most fun, returns in Forever: you can only communicate with your buddy via a walkie-talkie. That walkie-talkie works just like an old-fashioned talking device works in real life, so when you talk, you can’t understand the other person and vice versa. So get ready for a lot of half-baked and unintelligible conversations, because We Were Here Forever takes it bigger, but sometimes also too long-winded.
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We Were Here Forever consists of six different chapters. After my first playing session of about three hours, it turned out that I had only just completed the first chapter. Where the total playing time of the previous We Were Here games varied from two to six hours, this new part is an adventure that exceeds the previous games in terms of playing time. On the one hand, logical, because developer Total Mayhem has pumped over two years of development time into this game for a reason, while the previous parts were made each in a year. However, more is not always better.
Where the six chapters themselves vary in a fun and creative way (from castles and cemeteries to underwater worlds and abandoned mines), the gameplay unfortunately does not always do that. Every new room you enter contains a new concept and if you like to play escape rooms, these concepts will look familiar to you. You communicate symbols to your companion while he or she has to enter the correct code, or you show someone the way through a maze of corridors: everything is covered. There is no lack of variety in puzzles, because during your journey through Castle Rock and beyond you will come across dozens of different puzzles. What sometimes annoyed me immensely, however, is the frequency in which puzzles are repeated.
Take, for example, the so-called “Trials Room” in Chapter One. I was the Sjaak and had to walk over a number of tiles in a certain order with a large wrecking ball in my claws. If I mess up the sequence, I’ll crash through the floor and the tune starts again. A nice puzzle in approach, but when I found out that the tune is repeated four times in a row, with a slightly different approach, I got the feeling that Total Mayhem has gone for pure filling in some cases. Now that is not such a disaster with fun puzzles such as the one above, but it becomes that if the repetition strikes twice in the same chapter and unfortunately also occurs frequently in the chapters that follow.
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It’s a sad blot on an otherwise entertaining co-op adventure, as We Were Here Forever doesn’t need extra hours of padding to entertain. That’s what the gameplay and the dynamics between you and your partner take care of. The larger puzzles therefore also stand out well above the smaller puzzles and have caused the most hilarity and cooperation during my journey. If, during a puzzle where you have to describe what kind of sound a certain sea monster makes, you find out that your fellow player can imitate the most vague beasts with his voice, I guarantee you that you will be laughing for at least five minutes. Just don’t forget to press that button on your walkie-talkie when you roll over the floor, because then your partner can also enjoy your laugh kick.
The level of collaboration also feels more complete and satisfying than in previous installments. Many We Were Here players will break out in a sweat when I tell you that there is another level in Forever where you have to brew potions in a race against time. Yet it feels a lot more streamlined in this fourth part. You’ll soon know what to do, you can switch gears with your buddy on the other side within a few tries and if you pay attention, you never have the idea that you are up against an impossible task.
It shows that Total Mayhem has learned from its mistakes and taken criticism from previous games and improved upon it to make We Were Here Forever a more streamlined and clearer co-op game. Rarely did I get the feeling that I was really stuck with a puzzle, because either you or your partner always know how to find a clue to move forward. Although that is not due to the hints that you can request every thirty seconds via your menu. Captain Obvious didn’t come around just yet when a hint told me that we should ‘probably do something with those symbols on the ground’. Well…
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The We Were Here games were never really about the story. There was a common thread, but it was skillfully put on the back burner by the developer. In Forever, however, Total Mayhem takes a different tack. The game picks up where We Were Here Together left off and in this new part the story finally gets more depth. You will learn about the evil clown and king associated with Castle Rock and you will be introduced to the resistance from the nearby town of Rockbury. It adds a nice extra dimension to fans of the series, but don’t bother understanding the story if you haven’t played the previous games. Then the plot will mainly sound like a jumble of rhymes and words that were already labeled as ‘old’ in the Middle Ages.
Still, the combination of a deeper story and the familiar, strong puzzle gameplay ensures that We Were Here Forever has become an entertaining package. Sometimes I was just a little too long eating my nose because I had already finished my part of the puzzle and my fellow player was still figuring everything out (or vice versa), but that happened so infrequently that it never really bothered. But these kinds of blemishes, in combination with the long-windedness that We Were Here Forever sometimes knows, unfortunately does not make this the ultimate puzzle adventure.
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Fortunately, I can say with certainty that every We Were Here fan can also purchase Forever without thinking twice. The game offers more hours of puzzle fun and if you know the concept of the previous games, you will also resign yourself more quickly to the fact that the game is often repetitive, because you know that after a more boring puzzle there is often a damn entertaining one. I won’t give too much away about the final puzzle, but take it from me that it is also very entertaining, but falls back on a well-known We Were Here formula. If you’ve played the earlier parts you probably know what I’m talking about and if not, you’ll be in for a big surprise at the end of the game.
Unfortunately I can say with less certainty that newcomers will have just as much fun with We Were Here Forever. The threshold to get in is just a bit too high in my opinion, because of the excessive number of hours that you spend working on the puzzles in this game. Because you can only play We Were Here Forever in duos, it can also be difficult to find someone with a reasonable game PC or console and who is open to spend several evenings on this Let alone that you both put down 18 euros to get the to purchase a game. If you have never played a game from this developer, I advise you to check the earlier parts first. If those are up your alley, you can always pick up Forever later.
We Were Here Forever is now available on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
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