Co-op games have been having a massive renaissance over the past few years. From GoTY winner It Takes Two, to the chaotically funny Peak, we’ve been spoiled with great experiences to jump into with friends. Total Mayhem’s We Were Here series has been going since all the way back in 2017, with the titular We Were Here, a co-op puzzle game where you and a friend try and find your way out of a frigid castle with just your wits and a set of walkie talkies. It’s been a long time since the first We Were Here, with 4 entries separating it and the newest game – We Were Here Tomorrow. But with so many other co-op titles in the gaming space now, is We Were Here Tomorrow worth your time?
Wibbly-Wobbly
We Were Here Tomorrow starts with you and your co-op partner trekking across an arctic tundra towards a large door, beyond which lies a giant rift in the sky. After being dragged into the rift, you’ll both awaken in a retro-futuristic facility where you can collect your walkie-talkies (a series staple) and have your rescuer/new supervisor walk you through the basics of the game. The facility – run by a company called Nor?ek – and the dialogue of the woman walking you through it give very distinct Portal vibes, which is a high bar to set yourself when it comes to comparison.
As we dived further into the facility We Were Here Tomorrow leaned heavily into the silliness, with the first full room puzzle involving a shrink ray, complete with a squeaky voice change for whoever ended up tiny. Running through the gamut of puzzles and hamster assault courses was fantastic, and really set us up for what seemed to be a genuinely fun and funny co-op experience figuring out exactly what the team at Nor?ek had been up to. Shortly after each of you get a tool glove, one with sticky hand that can be used to hit buttons and grab items from hard to reach places, the other allowing the player to place a Bismuth cube on pressure plates or to use as a makeshift platform. You can also fire them at your partner, to pull them around or slow them to a crawl. All very good fun.
However, the fun of the early game is hampered by a slew of technical issues. During our time with the game we had to restart more than once due to the walkie-talkies failing to work. There has been a patch, but the issue still popped up intermittently through our entire playthrough. There’s also the issue of confusing level design and set dressing. The second section has a lot of anti-gravity puzzles, where you and your partner are on different parts of the ceiling or in opposite rooms flipped upside down. Again, most of the puzzles were really well designed, but the execution made them a little more frustrating than they should be. I got caught multiple times on pieces of scenery when crouching, and then spent a good few minutes looking for an alternate route as I didn’t think I could go the intended way. Or with the fun laser puzzle, my partner didn’t realise he could reach some of the required crystals because the mantle mechanic wasn’t working consistently.
Timey-Wimey
Now, if the only issues were a few technical hiccups here and there and the puzzle design maintained the quality of some of the early sections, this review would be going in a much different direction. Unfortunately that is not the case.
We managed to overcome the wonky platforming and mic issues to stabilise a massive rift, and get flung backwards, forwards, maybe sideways in time. Whichever way, it certainly wasn’t to better puzzles. The first one was an interesting power puzzle, with one of us on an upper platform and the other down below, directing each other to coloured cables that activated generators. A well designed puzzle, with a clear failure state in that clicking the wrong button sounded a big horn and the lights flashed red. After figuring it out with a bit of trial and error, we moved on to the next room.
A similar set up, just more generators. But. You need to do them in a very specific order, and if you mess up, you still get the horn and the red lights, but you need to then recognise the order is wrong, reset the puzzle and go in a different order. Now, I get it, this is a puzzle game, but there was no indication from the room before that messing up would require a reset. And when we finally figured out the order to charge one of the batteries, we just had to do the exact same order; two more times. The was barely any environmental hints to indicate the correct pathing, no hints from your supervisor (who, by the way is usually much chattier), just try, reset and try again until you get the correct combo and repeat. Tedious.
The next section was hampered again by softlocks, and we had to reset twice. Both times it took us all the way to the start of the section and we had to repeat some pretty lackluster match this shape puzzles to open doors. I don’t want to go into every puzzle – one for spoilers and two because the review would get far too long – I do want to highlight the key stand out from the game. After a section where you swap places in time (good idea, poorly excecuted) there’s a time loop puzzle where you need to set up echos of yourselves to satisfy multiple conditions at once and break four crystals. It’s wonderful puzzle design – the objective is clear and the how is so rewarding. The level is visually interesting without being cluttered, the music and atmosphere was tense and frantic as we scrambled from area to area hoping we pulled off the sequence correctly, and when we did it felt amazing. A perfect ending set piece to a bit of a lopsided experience.
Stuff.
That puzzle happens about 2/3rds of the way through the game and the last area was so equally frustrating and uninspired I genuinely didn’t want to finish it. All of the issues from earlier are thrown right in you face at the end. I haven’t mentioned the tools much, as aside from a few small upgrades and one new way to use both (disguised as two, but changing the colour twice doesn’t make it a new mechanic) they’re both underutilised and pernickity.
The inconsistency of the jumping/mantling is annoying in smaller areas, but in a first person platforming section it made me question aloud why they even had the shimmy animation programmed in, between swearing profusely as my character failed to pull themselves up AGAIN. The last section of puzzles are uninspired, poorly explained, and grind the entire acing of the story to a halt. And I’m sure the moral quandry the devs were trying to set up would have hit a lot harder if I didn’t have such a deep distain for the supervisor character, from her constant interruptions that cut into the already buggy comms system.
There are some flashes of brilliance in We Were Here Tomorrow. My co-op partner said it contains fome of his favourite puzzle moments of the year; and we’ve played Big Walk and Orbitals. But even without the bugs, the story is mostly forgettable and so many of the puzzles fall victim to one person having all the info while the other stands about waiting to be told what to do – a difficult sell in a packed co-op market. With the bugs? An excersise in frustration I cannot recommend.
We Were Here Tomorrow was reviewed on PlayStation 5. Gamer Social Club would like to thank the devs and publisher for the code.
