I don't really feel like reviewing the first or second game as they're relatively basic (the latter relying on timers to inflate the "difficulty" which is null if you just keep retrying anyways), but I feel like this one's worth a start due to them clearly aiming for a larger scope.

We Were Here Together is the third title by Total Mayhem Games, who seem to have been founded specifically to focus on asymmetric co-op experiences. If you can't read the synopsis of the games, the idea is one player has information the other doesn't and vice-versa, and together they communicate this info to fill in the blanks or get rid of junk info. Together cranks that up to an absurd degree, and to make one of the final puzzles of the game be quite literally just reading from a book back and forth to each other and veeery slowly permuting was frankly kind of soul draining; the problem with this challenge in particular is that if you forget even one step of the chain you have to redo a large portion of it working from the earliest known info. Is this "puzzling"? I mean yes, until you start taking notes; there is no timer for this one anyways, eventually you'll find your way out just through brute trial and error and keeping notes.

The elevator section near the beginning of the game is absurdly huge, and nearly impossible to distinguish from player's perspectives. Some elevators are linked, which ones? Who knows! They all look the same and for most of it the players have no real way of identifying them short of beginning to reconstruct the entire scene plank by plank. It's not so bad though, we kind of just "fell upwards" through it naturally, it's not that obtuse I just think it's very poorly thought out; this was probably the most blatantly "over-scoped" part of the game in my mind, there's also just a lot of literal empty space around the foot of this section that made us think we were missing something, it should have had tighter invisible walls.

//////MINOR SPOILERS///////
The worst room easily had to have been the potion room, because it immediately presents you with relevant information FOR THREE DIFFERENT PUZZLES at the same time; this makes it overwhelming figuring out where to begin as the person in the potion room, unless person B in the pressure room figures out which part is relevant for you. There's also an annoying sound effect from the mixer machine that initially sounds like it's "reacting" to something but it's just ambient, and the actual first puzzle of that room has extremely little feedback for person A until person B kind of just gestures "erm, more pressure... less pressure..." and you need to figure out how much these nonsensical tubes even add up to, and they're bi-directional(???). Also, making the gear puzzle completely automatic when you need to stop person B's platform with them is annoying, just moving the gear in and out for a second at a time as it automatically trips it.
//////END MINOR SPOILERS///////

The game is also just, kind of buggy. There's a maze earlier on that I swear I got softlocked in due to clipping issues, but after an uncomfortable length of time my character finally broke free. It also wasn't super clear what the actual path was, we both felt we accidentally completed it and just kinda shrugged. Another section just straight up didn't perform its main mechanic, until we swapped positions and it magically just worked in the exact same order.

I don't know, I adore these kinds of experiences but we (/u/Nowhere and I) both agree that this one was frankly exhausting. For every good puzzle there was one more that was just "I have a list and you have a list let's subtract the difference, one at a time" often literally and thinly veiled as different through set dressing. I think I might prefer We Were Here Too over Together even, and all of these so far are a full tier minimum below my personal favorite asymmetric co-op experience in Tick Tock: A Tale For Two (which, tbf, came out after the first two WWH games, but it manages to have much greater contrast between the players' experiences while still seemlessly interwieving them, all while requiring no connectivity of any kind in-game; it's 100% playable over a phone call or just talking in the same room!

I still recommend this if you're looking for a relatively unique (albeit maybe the setting a bit stale by the third entry...) asymmetric co-op experience, but your enjoyment of this will probably fluctuate on what type of puzzles you enjoy. This kind of has everything, but also half of it is reading text back to one another.

DO NOT BUY
DO NOT BUY
DO NOT BUY

easily worst in entire series, all the other ones are quite fun, but this one is stupidly tedious and the puzzles aren't really even satisfying. You're just relieved that you didn't make a small mistake that set you back 5 full minutes of progress for the 30th time.
2/5 stars

This is a decent co-op game, but it's plenty rough around the edges. The in-game radio provides a cool atmosphere at first but is ultimately clunky and irrelevant to the experience of the game. The puzzles that each player are given often feel asymmetrical in difficulty and in work given to each player, so often times one player might be left standing around while the other solves their puzzle. Aside from that and some oddball voice acting, the game has a neat story and some fun puzzles to play with a friend.

Having played the first two games, I can say that this has been the best one so far. I had a lot of fun with this game, but there are some puzzles that never really made sense. There was this one clock puzzle that we ended up figuring out by pure luck. Overall though, this game had a story unlike the first two and it was kind of interesting. Both sides got to see different parts of the story, which could be annoying but I liked the idea that we could tell or not tell each other what's truly going on for our side.

Overall though, I think this game is worth getting if you enjoy puzzle games and have the right friend to play it with!

Whereas the first entry of this series felt much more like a prototype (or a really good student project), 'We were here together' feels like a fully fledged game now. You have to play this with a friend, as you are in different areas with complimenting information that each side needs to solve these puzzles. The main twist is, you don't see what the other sees and are reliant on a walkie talkie solely. So much like Escape Rooms IRL.
The game has basically 10 bigger puzzles that range from quite easy to frustrating, but not because they are too hard, but because the lack of info often times lets you follow wrong hunches for too long.
Still, it was a fun experience.

"I'll sacrifice myself for her!" :nerd emoji:

☆

Ermm... Puzzles kinda tedious on this one! Oh well, had fun with a friend.

This one feels much, much more polished than We Were Here or We Were Here Too. There's much more varied environments, there's a plot, there's cutscenes, and the puzzle are so much more varied and better thought out than in the previous titles. Bring a pen, because boy do they get complex...

If I was to pick holes though, I would start with that story and the set dressing in general. I'm not really sure what starting the game at the research base adds; I felt much happier once we inevitably got back inside the castle, an environment much more fitting for this kind of game imo. The story.... ehhhh, I'm sure somebody likes it, but it didn't do it for me at all. I don't think it needed to be there at all (the first two games lacked any kind of plot and were no worse for it), and it feels like only one of the 2 players gets given enough information to have any clue what's happening. The other gets to watch hackneyed characters just spout overly flowery dialogue at each other and I'm just not here for it.

Overall though, definitely the best of the 3 I've played by this point. It's nice to have a series with a consistent upwards trajectory in terms of quality for once.

Es ist an sich lobenswert, dass das Spiel versucht sein Format etwas zu ändern. Man ist in der ersten Hälfte zusammen und muss gemeinsam Rätsel lösen, was zum Teil auch gelungen ist ... wären da nicht diese zwei unglaublich frustrierenden Schalter-/Aufzugrätsel direkt hintereinander. Nach der Hälfte wird das Spiel deutlich besser, besinnt sich auf alte Stärken und trennt die Co-Op-Spieler wieder voneinander. Ab diesem Zeitpunkt werden die Rätsel dann auch wieder deutlich besser. Schön auch, dass das Spiel dieses Mal gefühlt doppelt so lange ist wie die vorherigen ist und dies nie wirklich negativ ins Gewicht fällt. Bin auf den Nachfolger gespannt ... der müsste dann nur langsam mal im PSN erschienen.