The main concept of We Were Here Forever is pushing for communication between the players while they solve escape room puzzles. A clever way to keep the gameplay going, but also keep the narrative moving. These include small cutscenes, but also incorporate the plot into some of the puzzles, telling a story as the players solve the puzzles. It was a nice surprise to see how much story is in this game compared to the last three. It is down to the two explorers to try to accomplish this or be forever trapped within the King’s magical grasp of Castle Rock. The story grows larger than the King, Jester and Castle Rock, because soon it is learned that the townsfolk were fed-up with the King’s poor agreement with the evil power, and so came up with a plan to overthrow the King, but sadly did not happen. It is not long until the Jester returns, doing the King’s bidding by causing frustration for our explorers, who end up captured and stuck within the puzzles of the Jester. Mysterious energy opens the doors and off the explorers go trying to get through the castle and find a way to escape. This sequel continues the story of two explorers, who wake up separated in their own jail cells inside Castle Rock. It is a cool feature that helps it set the atmosphere and concept of the game. It works to communicate in a calm matter so that the messages between each other are clear. The device lights up when your teammate is using it to simulate real-life behaviour in which a button has to be pressed to communicate, but if you both are pressing it then the voice is interrupted. This does not have to be this way if you and a friend use something like Discord, but for playing with random online players, the walkie-talkie is the only way to communicate with each other. We Were Here Forever is heavy on communication, using a walkie-talkie in the game as voice communication. If you cannot find a friend, there is a lobby system to create or join other lobbies, so you can find random players. In fact, this is the longest entry in the series. In fairness, the game is not expensive, coming in at £14.99, and my playthrough was around 8+ hours, so it is not too short. There is also no friend’s pass to have a friend join in for free, so both players need to have the game. There is no option for single-player or split-screen, this is all online-based. It should be noted that We Were Here Forever, and the series in general, are cooperative experiences only. I can comfortably say We Were Here Forever is the best title so far, accumulating everything that has been learned from developing the previous titles and combining it all into this swansong for the series. Every sequel was more extensive in scope, more adventurous with its puzzle design and kept adding more lore to build toward an interesting story within its setting of Castle Rock and its mysterious residents, which comes to a conclusion in this game. All three sequels are commercial titles and having recently played them all quite close together, it has been an eye-opener to see how each sequel improved. Its reception was met with praise, so much so that since then there have been three follow-ups, We Were Here Too, We Were Here Together and this latest entry. We Were Here was developed as part of a student project. It was a concept I enjoyed, but you could see it was a teaser, a demonstration of what could be possible. We Were Here is a free game, so there was no cost for giving it a test, so I recommend grabbing a friend and giving it a shot. The We Were Here series is fresh in my mind, as I actually only discovered the first title earlier this year when I played it with a friend on stream.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |