Co-op puzzle We Were Here Forever
We’ve been here forever this is the newest game in our We were here a series of collaborative puzzle adventures released today on Xbox. You and your partner take on the role of Antarctic explorers who are trapped in a sinister castle and must work together to escape! With the introduction of crossplay, we’re opening up a world of new players to team up with. Whether you want to play with a friend or dive into the game and chat with a stranger, it will all be possible. Communication is everything and you will have to trust your partner, as streamers Copacaxi and Icharr_ perfectly demonstrate in our latest trailer!
Our design philosophy
What does it take to make a good puzzle? We’ve been here forever this is the fourth game in We were here series, so this isn’t our first rodeo. We’ll start with some basic principles of what the perfect puzzle for our game should look like: each puzzle should be related in some way to communication and the different challenges and fun you can have with it. Describing symbols, helping someone through a maze, imitating sounds, saying stupid words, and more.
To put it simply: if it doesn’t make you talk, whisper, laugh or scream, then it shouldn’t be in our games.
Puzzles in puzzles
Puzzle inspiration can come from many places! From a scene from a movie, an idea for a cool mechanic, some part of a game’s story, or even a completely abstract theme. The process of creating a puzzle is also very individual; each designer works differently and may use different tools. Options include prototyping with cardboard and board game components, creating storyboard sketches, detailed diagrams, making small movies or in-engine prototyping, and we’re sure there are many more. There were even origami models made for specific puzzle conditions!
Generally speaking, we are always looking for the fastest and most efficient way to “prove” the main idea of a puzzle – what makes this puzzle cool and unique, and does it work? Once we have confidence in this basic idea, we make more and more detailed prototypes, including custom drawings, tweaks and updates to the design of the puzzle, placing it somewhere in the world/story and so on. It could be months between this first version and what looks like the final result!
Design Challenges (spoilers ahead!)
Determining the difficulty of puzzles correctly is one of the hardest parts of puzzle design. We have very different players enjoying the series, often for different reasons and with different levels of experience. Any puzzle should be interesting for both the veteran of the series and the newcomer. There’s also a very fine line between challenging and frustrating, and it takes a lot of testing, tweaking, and sometimes reworking to find the right balance.
To put it simply: if the players get stuck, it should be because they don’t cooperate or communicate well, not because the puzzle is unclear or too hard.
Puzzles rarely go from initial idea to implementation without any changes. An example (with slight spoilers) is a puzzle where players must communicate with a creature using sounds – the players are separated as long as one has a “dictionary” and the other must do the actual communication. This means trying to imitate the sounds the creature uses to communicate and have one player translate them.
This puzzle game started with the idea of imitating sounds, but almost everything else has changed. Initially, there was a kind of beatbox challenge in which players had to match the rhythms of two different machines. Players had to use turntables and even something like a drum computer or sequencer! It soon became apparent that it was really difficult, and that it was more fun to try to imitate more organic sounds, so the creature was introduced. The final component that makes it all work was the translation element: you were actually talking to the creature. It ties everything together and gives purpose. But even when that was figured out, getting the details right – questions/answers, vocabulary, controls, and difficulty level – took a whole bunch of tries before we reached the fun final version of the puzzle.
Try to solve the puzzles yourself today!
But enough about how we made the game – We’ve been here forever out now on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, you’re ready to dive in and explore! Grab a friend and team up to unravel the mysteries of Castle Rock together! We’ve been here forever is the biggest adventure after three exciting separate games in We were here A series, each of which is a unique puzzle adventure that you can experience with a friend. We’re happy to report that even after three games, we still have a lot of great puzzle ideas, and longtime fans of the series agree, saying: We’ve been here forever this is the best game!
Find out if you and your partner have what it takes to escape or find yourself trapped in Castle Rock… Forever!
We’ve been here forever
Total Games Mayhem
$17.99
You and your friend are trapped in the realm of Castle Rock and have no choice – have you been betrayed or are you just not that smart? Work together to escape, explore and solve puzzles in this mysterious Antarctic adventure. Keep in mind, all is not what it seems – dark secrets are hidden in the shadows. Can you escape? Starting in dungeons deep within Castle Rock, you and your fellow prisoner must find a way out and return to face the icy Antarctic skies again – but escaping this nightmare isn’t as easy as leaving the castle itself. If you can free yourself from the cages, you will need to make a choice about where to explore next. Outside the Keep, you’ll learn the history of Rockbury, its people, and the resistance plans formed against the king to escape this icy place. Hope will lead you to the creepy Cemetery and make you descend into the dark waters of Foundry. Someone or something has brought you here, and you are the centerpiece of a plan that has evolved over the centuries. Only an unbreakable bond with your partner will give you hope to survive in the face of such a terrible desire… NOTE: This game is for co-op only. To do this, both players must have a working, compatible microphone and an internet connection.
