New "We were here" adventure courts curious gamers at PAX East .
In the back of the PAX Show floor amongst a long line of display stands full of merch, beguiling monitors with flashy images, and focused ...
This is the 4th entry in the series. The first "We Were Here " was developed as part of a student project while studying at the "Hogeschool Rotterdam " (University of Applied Sciences). It was submitted as a student entry at the Independent Games Festival and won the Indigo showcase "Best Indie Game Award" The game was released for free on Steam in February 2017 and from there on build a cult following of gamers who were intrigued by the co-op puzzle room challenges the game had to offer as well as its story line and world building.
With a mysterious story about a mad king who was left without male heirs, a mysterious and manipulative jester performing blood rituals and making unsavory deals and much much more. The story is to be discovered and puzzled together instead of being laid bare in exposition. In a lot of ways the story is a big puzzle itself.
Gameplay consists of you and a partner moving through a series of elaborate puzzles often split in different areas, where you actions effect surroundings of your partner. Armed with only your wits and your trusty walkie talkie it is imperative to communicate what you see and listen to your buddy on the other side in what they are experiencing. Since you see completely different things it is often a matter of comparing Apples and Pears.
In this iteration of "We were here" the developers at Total Mayhem games want to address some questions the community had since the very beginning and throughout the series. What is the full story behind the characters that occupy , or occupied Castle Rock, what became of them and most important. What happened to the explorers that were left behind? Does one truly escape Castle Rock and the power hungry Jester that gets a kick of trapping innocent souls in his puzzles.
This time , besides being confined in the castle walls we actually get to escape only to find us trapped in a larger biome of challenges. Where does it all lead will be the big question to answer then the game comes out next month May 10th 2022.
After a chat with the developers about this new entry we took place at the demo station with our back to each other and a headset on closing us off from the Expo Hall noises and relying on Walkie Talkie for communication. The timed demo put us each in our own space like before with each a series of doors and a giant rotating push lever. After a quick comms check we described what we saw and there was a bit of confusion of what we saw above us and the icons displayed on the top of the walls. In this case I was talking about the ON TOP out of view part of the wall where normally the ceiling or roof would be. We also found each other, each on a different platform/floating room. We quickly found that lining up certain icons would activate a door for one of us to go through into another room where often a giant key was ready to be turned. Doing so made new rooms appear with even more symbols. We spend the remainder of the 15 minutes moving through the rooms one after another taking turns in pushing levers, jumping through doors and portals. We knew we got close when the Jester came to taunt us. He must have gotten nervous. Eventually we had seconds left but as I jumped through what certainly must have been the last door the time ran out, leaving us wondering what lies beyond.
Now we wait until the release, which is luckily very soon and we will be ready to push through this room again and beyond on our way to solve the mystery and perhaps escape back to civilization. The game will first released on PC but shortly follow as on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
